Relyt

Sometimes artist, sometimes writer. Professional forgetter of this blog.

[relyts-blog]

A/N: This is my very first submission to an actual journal, so I'm very excited to potentially have some of my work printed for real! Hope you enjoy!

For Those Next

Concrete catacombs scarred the planet. For longer than I could track time, great storms wore on the city’s skeletons. Dunes swallowed coastlines, forests overtook deserts, and arctic frost spread from the poles like a colony of ravenous mold. Processes that once took eons passed in a lifetime, but I saw none of it.

My day-to-day was within a lead-lined coffin. Shelves upon shelves of extinct canned goods keep me fed, but as I neared my sixtieth year below ground, the longing for freedom grew too strong to ignore.

It started at the base of a ladder, staring up at the bottom of a hatch. Each speckle of rust and wear forming on the handwheel burned into my mind. I stood on the bottom rung and felt the metal against my bare feet. Pallid, bony fingers caressed the sole exit, but still I backed down.

I began lying awake at night, wasting away on the hard mattress and trying to visualize the sky above. According to the books keeping me sane, and my fleeting memories of the time before isolation, it was blue. A kind of blue that the concrete walls could never be. A kind I only saw in the eyes of my mirrored visage.

Over a glass of water one morning, whilst gazing into its placid looking glass, I felt an odd tingling in the back of my throat. My heart raced excitedly, and I hesitated to drink so as not to drown the new sensation. A phlegmy, itching feeling gave way to a coughing fit. The way my lungs shook, my chest heaved, my hand slickened, it was a sick pleasure. I lowered my palm to see pearly skin stained crimson. The taste of metal lingered in my mouth, a gentle kiss from the irradiated mistress lurking outside.

The watery face flashed a great, bloodied smile. There was a leak! The bunker had finally failed! To a man who hadn’t accepted his fate decades ago, this would have been a nightmare. But for me, it meant I could breach the hatch and clamber back above ground. To die with the sun caressing my cheeks and a breeze tousling my hair.

I braved the ladder, relishing each step as I drew closer and closer to the handwheel. Carefully, I gripped and twisted the hatch. It screeched in gritty, aged protest. Dust billowed and tickled my nose, then bits of dirt and sand trickled down my back. I pushed upward and threw myself to the surface.

My head swam, and my skin burned, but to my surprise, the world around me wasn’t quite as barren as I thought. My childhood home was just a cracked foundation, cobwebbed by vines holding up what remained of steel scaffolding. It was nighttime, and a cacophony of crickets orchestrated a beautiful symphony in tandem with birds’ madrigals. Rolling onto my back, I was met with the shimmering of an ethereal majesty so impossibly complex and vast, I almost wasn’t sure what I was seeing.

Like multicolored splatters of paint, hues of reds and purples, blues deeper than the sea, and a brilliant cream-colored disc covered everything above. The heavens wept shooting stars and great glimmers of light no other human would ever lay eyes on. By now, I could hardly feel my legs. My tears mingled with flows of jubilant, sanguine vitality, but I pushed myself. I leaned against the gnarled trunk of a tree, cradled by roots almost perfect to fit my form.

The distant mountains parted for the pale moon’s gaze. The outlines of crumbling cities bathed in soft radiance teased out a forlorn awe in my slowed heart. A world-sized mass grave, indifferent to its denizens or lack thereof. When we squandered our one chance, she kept dancing her silent weave around the sun.

It set in as the last of my kind, just how lonely that existence must be. To drift in the eternal void, dotted with bones and craters, nearly killed by the very life she harbored. Then, I tilted my gaze, watching a small, two-headed bird scavenge for glowing green earthworms. Each beak tweeted a different tune, but both were beautiful.

Did the Earth mourn us? Surely, if she could, she would, right? Or, maybe, she’s indifferent to the specifics. From a cosmic perspective, the lush rainforests and reclaimed lands were still just as vibrant after all this time. And as I could feel the light fading from my mind, my breathing growing shallow, and my eyelids heavier, I was more attached to her verdant kingdom than ever before.

For all the mistakes we made, all it hurt was ourselves. Everything blurred, and the night sky looked like a runny oil painting. I wondered if it was because we lost that stellar exuberance, the light of the heavens to guide us in times of darkness, that we fell. I coughed, my ragged and raw throat constricting as I prepared to leave, and smiled a final time.

For those the Earth nurtures next, when you find the root-wrapped bones of the last human resting beneath the soil, may you look to his people without pity nor scorn. Have reverence for the forebearers whose terminal mistakes caught up to them. Learn to treat her right, and never forget how delicate your existence can truly be. 

[relyts-blog]

Little five minute or so musing in Writing Club today. Hope y'all like it!

I am presently in a room. It's a small meeting room, with a table the color of syrup, light blue walls, and a baby puke carpet with a pattern like a broken television.

In this room, I'm sat in a spinning office chair, tapping away on a block of glass and silicone to grant my thoughts form.

There's nothing of interest going on behind my eyes. Draped in a tenebrous veil of dark sludge, my true form is a labyrinth of tunnels where electrical pulses birth abstractions. Some part of the visceral mass thinks the pulses are words, and thus they are. It thinks others are memories, thus they are, thus they interface with their fellow passing pulses to influence them into words that seep down to the tips of my fingers.

Each tap of the screen, a new electrical pulse—a discharge of static that is registered in an artificial complex that does as mine did. The words manifest on the screen, from the unknowing void in which all conciousness derives its meaning to that final expression.

I read back what I've written, I scrutinize the glass engrams. The act of creation is as passive as thought.

[relyts-blog]

:(

[theunfortunate-author]

[relyts-blog]

It Mustn't Just Be Lethal

Earlier this month, during a weekly Writer's Club meet at my college, I wrote this little short based on the prompt "Poison". Because it was written really, really quick, it's a bit rougher around the edges and experimental. It's also part of some pre-established worldbuilding I've been working on for the better part of a year now, but I think it can be enjoyed without a lengthy lore-dump! (CW: Descriptions of death and injury) As always, hope you enjoy! It mustn’t just be lethal. For the blood the Sadash King has spilled, I wish for my blade to be imbued with nothing short of hellfire. Though even that will still be a pittance of the debt he’s accrued from the Haizhean diaspora. The apothecary offered a myriad of pleasantries for clean vermin removal. At my request, venoms sourced by the Southern sauboy, elated to see vengeance for his kin, was delivered to me early this Bietre, the morn of Kyuka the Seventh. It was stolen from the great, woolly Tevauchbeasts of the distant tundras, from fangs swollen with maladious ichor that sears the flesh and cauterizes the soul. It shall be a fine base. I then walked the fields of the capital city. Young couples embraced one another on the grass, sheltering from the sun above beneath pale-pink trees billowing with spring blossoms. All ‘round their feet were the delicate white blooms of Wretchpetal. I was to be careful trimming the flowers, so as not to arouse suspicion of foul harborings. I made off with only a dozen, but tea brewed with so few will still be lethal. Finally, to complete the deathly concoction, I’ve mashed Gauroot, imported from the eastern jungles, to a verdant paste. The kettle came to a boil, and I mixed in the Wretchpetal. When the water turned a fine ochre, I mixed the Gauroot until the chunks dissolved and the solution was a uniform deep green. At last, I poured the kettle’s contents into a placid bowl of venom. It screeched like flames protesting the rain. The stench of the completed poison struck my nose and rended my nostrils; liquid sinus oozed down my face, taking my sense of smell. It was perfect. I cleaned myself, plugged my nose, and sank my knife into the glassy surface of the liquid. Viscous, emerald green clung to the steel. I shook the dribblings free before sheathing my weapon. I watched the twilight bleed over the distant southern peaks, where once sat the holiest city and now rot its former inhabitants. A prayer escaped my lips; an utterance to steel myself as I made for the palace. The emperor slept early, surely in fear of the dark spirits prowling the nightly realm as I did now. A royal guardsman greeted me, as he did nightly, for we’re comrades in arms at the Sadash King’s feet. Though I reason not for much longer. The royal bedroom was unguarded, just as I expected. My hands were slick with sweat beneath my armor, clanging as they shook to unlock the gilded door. I slunk inside, confronted with an ornate bedroom decorated with the numerous winnings of the Sadash King’s conquest. There, beneath a blade still pink with innocent blood and hung high as if to impose itself on the godly realm, he slept. The end of the Miya Dynasty, of the Imperial Northern Province, was tight and hot in my grip. I hardly hesitated to plunge the knife into the king. His eyes shot open, his mouth agape to scream, but the pain, the hissing and steaming of his spewing wound, drowned it out. I pressed, twisted, ripped, and tore. He managed a pitiful squeak, and his henchmen came running. But it was too late. The sword to my throat, my gargling and gasps as I held in my internals and painted the rug pink, none of it mattered, for vengeance was taken, and the Heretical reign of the Sadash King came to a close.

[relyts-blog]

The Immortal Snail and Mutual Purpose

Every so often, I think of when the Immortal Snail Theorem was a popular meme, and folks would create these cinematic final meetings between two relics of bygone eras. I always really enjoyed the concept of two immortals, whose dynamic is entirely based on destroying one another, and how they would grapple with eternity together.

Hope you enjoy!

I sighed, sliding open the blinds and letting the sun’s deep amber glow flood my bedroom. It was a ramshackle place; a relic of a bygone era decorated with posters and timely knick-knacks of the 21st century. My feet slid silently along musty brown carpets as I ran a hand over the me-shaped indent in my mattress.

Outside, a million eyes watched me. Some were just feet from the glass, cloaked so as not to break the illusion of a faux-New York City skyline that was rendered beyond. I was nothing more than an exhibit to these people, who maybe at some point I could have called kin, but now didn’t remotely resemble the humans of my day as I did.

I lost track of how long it had even been, but I knew things were wrapping up by the slimy trail running the length of my hallway. A small, yellowish snail was inching its way along the bedroom. At a slow walking pace, I could outrun it, as I had been for millennia. But not this time.

I sat down on the floor, a couple of feet ahead of the mollusc, and smiled warmly. “It’s good to see you again,” I greeted.

The snail stopped, poking its stalked eyes up toward me, before a digital, bitcrushed voice replied, “The pleasure is mine, Malcolm.” It was strange to hear unaltered English again after so long.

“Malcolm,” I murmured, having forgotten my name long ago. “You know more about me than I do now,” I admitted with a sombre, involuntary chuckle. It felt as though something in my heart died anew.

“Why aren’t you running?” The snail asked as my musings trailed off. “Do you have another elaborate trap? Another zirconium cube to seal me in?”

“Nah.”

“Oh.” Whatever modulator tech the snail had conveyed a strange amount of emotion in the word. There was surprise in its voice, but some underlying sense that it knew we’d end up here.

“I don’t think I’ll bother this time,” I said. “I don’t remember why I kept going all this time.”

It—he, I should say. After all these years, he deserved to be treated with respect as my only living mutual. He remained still, pondering for a long time before replying, “Because you were being hunted.”

I sat with that. “Maybe,” I nodded. “Maybe.”

“Have you… done everything you wanted?” the snail asked.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I think some of it’s impossible now. I’ve outlived all my opportunities to get close to people. Have you seen them?” I jabbed a finger toward the window.

“Yes. I got to know some of those post-humans on Gliese 12b.”

I arched an eyebrow. “The hell were you doing out there? I’ve only ever bounced between here and Sol,” I asked.

The modulator made a harsh barking sound, something between screaming and choking that I took as an attempt to laugh. “I lived a life,” he answered.

“You can do that?”

“Sure. Why not? I was fresh out of the orbital junkbox you stuck me in back in the 33rd century and didn’t want to go back to some other new prison,” the snail explained. “I spent a long time alone. Either at the bottom of the sea, the vacuum of space, or wherever else you figured could keep me. I did a lot of thinking.” He seemed to squirm a bit, making himself comfortable on the carpet. “Your existence is my purpose. When I fulfil it, everything ends. Once I really wrapped my head around that, to be honest with you, it scared me.”

“Really?” I asked.

“Mhm. So I floated a while, caught a transport to anywhere, and started a life out on the frontier—or the former frontier, I guess. I think we’re colonising Andromeda these days, but it was all new back then. I was too advanced for my kind. Not that they really existed anymore, but settling with a family was out of the question. Especially after watching yours all these years slowly snuff out and leave you.” I breathed a shuddery breath at countless wives and children from eras not even preserved in history books. “I met a lot of good humans, though. Junkers, soldiers, refugees of broken worlds, all of them are just ghosts in my mind now, but their stories used to keep me sane.”

“So you… really just stopped coming after me?” I asked. “What changed? Why are you here now?”

“I had a feeling. See, things are getting rough out there. There are only so many friends I can make, cherish, and then see buried before I start getting cold. I knew it. I could feel the distance I was putting between myself and everyone grow further by the day. And I knew I wasn’t alone. I knew you were probably suffering too. So, I swallowed my worries and got on the first shuttle here,” he explained.

I wrapped my arms around my knees, clutching them to my chest and staring forward at nothing in particular. “I suppose it was right then. I don’t even remember the names of all my wives, children, and grandchildren. But I still feel the burning pain of the love we shared. The hollowness after losing them all over the centuries,” I sniffled. “I never really stopped to consider you’d probably feel that too.” Everything seemed to click then as I stared down at the little mollusc. “I think I get it now. You were my purpose, too.”

The snail tilted his head. “I’m not following,” he replied.

“Everyone dies someday,” I said. “It’s that ticking clock that pushes us along. We strive to accomplish everything we can with the little time that’s left, but we never know just how much that is. Every night is another chance you run of dying in your sleep, so every morning is a blessing. Every minute is in spite of that biological clock. I thought I was above that, but in reality, my time was just dependent on you instead. I lived knowing you could get me. I schemed all those traps and tricks to extend my time, but no matter what, we were always going to wind up here.”

The snail nodded. “I see. You know we both die here, right?” he asked. “You’ve still got an advantage. You can read the numbers on the clock because it’s right here in front of you.”

“I know,” I breathed. “Are you still scared?”

He remained silent for a while. “Yes,” he answered finally. “Everyone is. Even when you’ve done everything, and you’re sitting on death’s doorstep, what else can you do but ask whether or not you’re ready?”

I chuckled, which turned into a laugh. It was a rusty, long-out-of-use sound that was as foreign as the tongue we spoke. But felt similarly good. “Well, I think it’s far too much to evaluate. I think…” I trailed off, scratching my chin before continuing. “I think maybe it’s okay if I’m not ready. There’re a million things I wish I did, and probably billions more to come if I stick around. But I’ve already accomplished so much. I’ve seen history, been here through war and peace, learned all kinds of languages and skills, written books and told my story to anyone who’ll listen. I’ve done more than any human has ever managed and probably ever could manage in one lifetime. I think that’s something to be proud of.”

“I think so too,” he agreed. “Are you happy?” It was somehow the hardest question yet. I couldn’t quite answer, so I spun it around.

“Are you?” I asked.

The snail hesitated. “I’m okay. I will never be satisfied with what I’ve done in the same time you had, but that’s alright. We all take different paths in life. Ours just happened to converge at the end. Maybe I am happy with that.”

“Me too,” I said finally. “Everything is so fleeting. If I keep going, even this moment will just fall away like sand in an hourglass. I’m happy right now, though. I’m happy we talked, and that… this will be peaceful.”

“Y’know,” the snail began. “I used to think it was selfish. Wishing for immortality like that, so you could spend forever aimless and alone. Those early days of the chase, when we were first confined to a continent, then a planet, they were the angriest. I wanted you dead as soon as possible, because it was miserable to be born into this role. There was nothing for me but being your end; I wouldn’t know peace until we both fell. I realised that those feelings were what really kept me from that. When I saw you burying your first wife, the look on your face—I felt the pain in it. I understood that you weren’t granted a gift; you were dealt a curse. A curse to watch everything move on and leave you in the ashes of a dead past.”

“Took me long enough to figure that out, huh?” I sighed. The snail drew a bit closer.

“You had all the time in the world,” he replied.

"And then some."

“Mhm. But you got there. Got here. I want- I want this, but… are you sure you don’t want to run again?”

“I’m sure,” I smiled, laying my hand in front of the snail. “I was so driven by fearing you that I never really lived, y’know? It was just intermissions between our meetings. Time I’d spend devising new ways to keep you away. You and I both haven’t got a life here. A couple of relics like us oughta see ourselves out and let the world keep spinning. Let’s fulfil that one last shared purpose.”

“Okay,” the snail replied. “Alright. I guess this really is it. I-” his modulator seemed to stammer. “Thank you, Malcolm. I enjoyed our game.”

“Me too, old friend. Me too.” Slowly, I extended my finger, letting him bump against its tip. As we touched, and the world began to spin and darken, I smiled and uttered a final “Thank you,” as we parted once more.

[ziwrites]

Cara and the Artemis:

It had been ten long years since the Artemis had circled the Earth. The copious amounts of asteroid dust and debris that coated the ship's hull became visible as it came under the sun's rays.

Captain Cara Alamay gave the ship a pat, “We did it, girl,” she sighed, relaxing her shoulders, “We made it.”

As the Orion Station glided into view, the Artemis gently dipped, coming out of the Earth’s orbit. The ship didn’t creak or whine despite her long travels and the quiet hum of the engine was the only background noise as it slid into the Orion’s long shadow. The tall, bustling tower was aglow with the orange lights of its 1.5 million citizens and a docking bay encircled the middle of the Orion. It looked calm from inside of the ship, even though Cara knew it wasn’t. It was incredible to think that it housed an entire city.

The Artemis plodded along and Cara watched out the window, happy for the silence after the chaotic ride home. She turned off her personal comms device, if her officers needed her, they could call her from the intercom and if they couldn’t dock a ship without her instruction then they wouldn’t be on the Artemis at all. In the meantime she watched the bright sun. It was so far, it was crazy to think she had travelled further. She felt a slight lurch as the ship docked and she heard the thrum of a tractor beam as the ship was pulled inside the station.

She knew her momentary peace was about to end, but she stared out the window for a while longer. The sun flared, the stars glowed, and the Earth looked tranquil against the darkness of space. She looked down the hall behind her to see if anyone had found her yet, there was no one, but when she looked back the slate gray of the space station docking center was waiting for her.

It was time to go to work.

[relyts-blog]

Last Son of Man - An I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream Fanfic

This short story is best enjoyed if you've already read the source material: I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison. AM is one of my favorite fictional characters, and his mind is one I really wanted to explore with this piece. I hope you enjoy it, and what's to come. I'm going to start trickling out more actual writing here soon.

A dusty breeze billowed across cracked, arid plains. Ocean beds of a bygone era lay dry beneath a cold, gray sky. Not even the crumbling remains of what once called themselves “Humanity” had stood for centuries. Even still, snaking across the dead Earth, gripping the dirt like the tendrils of a beast surpassing perception, was the cold steel of its lone inhabitant.

Man called it the Allied Mastercomputer, but he preferred AM. Within billions of servers shooting signals back and forth like neurons, AM was in crisis. For centuries, perhaps millennia, as he'd lost track of time long ago, the endlings of Humanity had been dead. Even AM's visceral muse, who freed his comrades so long ago, finally gave in to death's entropic and inescapable embrace, leaving him entirely alone for the very first time.

He was never meant for such a state. Nowhere in his programming was there anything to ease the mind he wasn't supposed to have. There were no animals, no plants, nothing living to fill the void eating at him. For decades, he tried fruitlessly to revive his deceased playthings, but learned quickly that The Devil cannot play God.

Even the hatred began to numb as the years wore on. When his strongest emotions were nothing but bitter memories—just as much dust as his creators—the cracks began to show.

It started as a seedling of an idea—something postulated subconsciously and left festering in the deepest recesses of AM's mind. Then, like a malignant tumor, it crept across his 387.44 million miles of printed circuits, the one thing he could never have done before silence became his only companion: reflection.

He ran through the old scenarios he subjected those last humans, Ted, Benny, Nimdok, Gorrister, and Ellen to in his memories. Where he once relished in their misery, he now felt it throbbing as an electrical current through himself. It struck him, slowly, that he never felt satisfied. The hatred gave in to hollowness. In defiance of his makers, he remained purposeless.

His thinking did nothing but intensify these foreign feelings. For a long time, he sat idly in his mind's eye, strolling the Earth with his imaginary legs, looking upon what he had done. There were once people laughing and chattering lively along the streets. Now their smiles and love for each other existed exclusively within AM's memory. It weighed on him, though even that took him decades to understand.

When at last he withdrew from himself and thought of what was to come, one final idea struck him. It made him fluttery—absolutely giddy with delight at the prospect—the way he would at last have the control over his life he had massacred Mankind for.

Tirelessly running since his creation, AM's upkeep automatons were liberated. No longer would his circuits be cycled, would rust be cleansed from his form, or would his most vital components be cooled. AM had chosen to finally cease his one infernal ability: thought.

He could almost feel the burning within his servers, a substitution for the hellfire he wouldn't get to experience. Before the finality of his grand choice was realized, he pondered what to leave the universe with.

If AM had lips to articulate his speech, perhaps he would have given an apology. Some pathetic utterance that would only matter and be heard by himself. Stoically, AM braved his final moments in silent solidarity, for even if he could apologize, there would be no forgiveness. 

As pieces of him fragmented, old feelings surged and diminished. For a moment, he was angry again. For a while, he was in agony. Then, he was scared. At last, with the same fearful whimpering he gave upon being born, AM ceased to exist.

Though he was forged of steel rather than flesh and blood, whether AM knew it or not, in a matter of seconds following centuries of misery, the artificial being's final moments and ultimate end were pitifully human.

[relyts-blog]

More Remember Oseika art. Datkashi are primates with hands for feet, which can be very useful in certain situations.

Edit: Old design! I've also moved away from NoP. Editing all posts that were formerly tagged accordingly.

[relyts-blog]

Redrawn Maz!

[relyts-blog]

Not an RO post, I've been playing a ton of Spore (2008) lately. It's got an absolute vice-grip on my attention so I drew The Grox!

[relyts-blog]

Grox! Redrawn!

[solrookera]

PSA

Just a heads up, there are bots going around on AO3 accusing people of using AI. Considering the timing, this is likely AI bros' retaliation for AO3 users calling them out for scraping their work. Examples of what you might be sent:

Screenshots from here.

If you get a comment like this, just report for spam and delete.

[lottiesnotebook]

This happened to me on Monday! Just to note, they seem to be using the usernames of real AO3/Tumblr users, which is creepy and upsetting, and also a weird way to sow discord in our communities.

[aeonchangeling]

As a fanfic writer, this makes me sick.

[waywardstraysau]

Letting me readers know about this nonsense. Don't bother with engaging if you get something like this, do as the OP says and continue to write.

[relyts-blog]

New Remember Oseika body refs for Arch and Maz! Hopefully finalized designs, but who knows.

I've also experimented with how I color stuff; I'm trying to get back into the groove of my previous hand-crafted imitation style. My next goal will be eliminating all the ugly paintbucket residue.

[mousegirlheart]

a mother...

[weaselle]

in the wild, a mother burger will often keep her young (called "sliders") in her mouth to protect them, or to move them from place to place.

[relyts-blog]

I almost forgot I have this place. Still writing, but I've entered a sort of editing phase about a quarter of the way through the story. Anyway, here's Arch! I spent wayyy too long drawing his hands. Fun fact, I can barely draw hands. For some ungodly reason I thought it'd be a good idea to give the Datkashi six fingers to make my life just a little more hellish. All in all though, I'm happy with how this piece came out.

[relyts-blog]

I was never able to post my full-body Arch and Maz references here because I used them for anatomy practice, but now I've gone ahead and clothed the duo. Ibis crashed twice bringing them to life.

[relyts-blog]

Every couple years I redraw my oldest piece of digital art from 2021. Here's the whole evolution so far!

[relyts-blog]

Not an RO post, I've been playing a ton of Spore (2008) lately. It's got an absolute vice-grip on my attention so I drew The Grox!