2023-05-09: !come forth, threshold queen, EMPTEAR
- Log: !come forth, threshold queen, EMPTEAR
- Cast: Yuliana Kafim, Elisa Kafim
- Where: The Silent Castle, Kaffeklubben Island
- Date: 2023-05-09
- Summary: Elisa has prepared a gift, for Yuliana. A machine to protect her as she dances the dance to destroy creation -- the Threshold Queen, EMPTEAR. It's the first time Yuliana's ever experienced Psycommu technology which affects her, because this cockpit is lined with Voidframe, rather than the standard Psychoframe. All is nothing, and it is all for her.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
OST: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9o_XTzYoa8 Hozier - Eat Your Young
The central heart of the Silent Castle is vast, and its ceilings are high. Suitable for both Macronised and miclonised life, these massive halls lead to the largest doors exiting to the inner bailey -- the courtyard which their fortifications surround. The Great Hall is the grandest of these rooms...
But there are more comfortable places to exist at size, too.
This sitting room, for instance, all warmed by rugs, furs, and tapestries. A fireplace crackles, set into one wall, and there are chairs for women of both sizes. But Yuliana, as it happens, doesn't need a chair right now: clad in black robes, she curls in the crook of Elisa's elbow, a laptop balanced along her massive arm. Type type type, she runs through the reports, reviewing the following they've amassed over the last month and a half.
"This is good, I suppose," she sighs, running through the viewing figures for one of their broadcasts. (Now they've reached some people, naturally, the next step is hooking their audience in with remote content.) Her acceptance grows ill-tempered, though, as she works herself up: "But it's not enough... no, it's not nearly enough! How are we to convince them change is necessary with charity and speeches?! Do they understand what they hear, or is this little more than puppet pageantry--?!"
With a frustrated noise, one of those black tendrils snaking out behind Yuliana CHOMPS the laptop and WHIPS it away from them. It has quite a ways to go before it hits the ground, so naturally, it shatters. "Ugh!" She grouses, draping herself over Elisa's arm with a great and dramatic flop. "This is miserable," she grumbles, all taken up by grumpiness. "I want to help them, but I'm not doing enough at all... I don't even know if these people have the dedication they need... they could be more grateful," and in her trailing complaints she meanders from blaming herself to the world, labile, volatile, cantabile.
(She's not singing, but the song sounds that way.)
<Pose Tracker> Elisa Kafim has posed.
Vast, grand, and unforgiving. It is the perfect location. ...For some things, anyway. For others, this lovely sitting room is nice enough. For Elisa, it is well to be in this room with Yuliana, larger as is her wont sometimes. There are many things she can do best at this size, not least holding Yuliana in this particular way. Her own robes are full and voluminous, of course, enough fabric to drown in.
"Not enough, is it...?"
Elisa turns her head down towards Yuliana as she rages, as she speaks of the necessities. That laptop whips away, and of course, it breaks. Yuliana flops onto her arm. Elisa smiles almost beatifically towards her, as if she has the answer to her woes.
She does, as it happens.
"They could," she says. "Their dedication will be tested, in time, and we will know. ...But it is true, too, that you could be doing more. I know how you prefer action..."
She inclines her head, without moving her body. "Yes. I have something to show you, my Yuliana."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
It is terribly pleasant to be held like this. Oh, Yuliana enjoys being held by Elisa at any size, to be sure -- but there's something special about her being literally larger than life, rather than just figuratively. Her darling Elisa is so impressive, impressing herself on the world!
Oh, she could drown in her, wilfully and happily.
But Elisa's smile is a beatific counterpoint to Yuliana's agonic display, and at once she is mollified, looking up to her. She tilts her head against Elisa's robes, gazing up to her. Obviously, she wouldn't tell her her assessment was wrong... it's because she's a woman of action, of course. "I do," she agrees, and she finds her smile again.
Her head straightens up, blinking those endless, envious eyes, as Elisa tells her she has something. "You do?" She alters the statement to a question as she orients it to Elisa, and she grasps the billowing robes about her elbow to help herself upright, standing by Elisa's arm. "Oh, Elya, you must show me!"
<Pose Tracker> Elisa Kafim has posed.
And Elisa does certainly impress herself on the world. In subtler ways than this, to be sure, but also in this particular way.
Endless, endless eyes. For all that they are so small, they hold a world within them. Elisa is glad to look into them, and the question she asks receives a slight nod, as Elisa reaches to gently cradle Yuliana in the crook of her arm as she begins to rise. "I will," she concurs, and begins to step from the sitting room toward the exit, walking in casual, easy steps. She does not even wait to get shoes, as she maneuvers towards the entrance to their great Silent Castle.
"I will take you to it. It is not so far away, but where I keep it is hidden."
"It waits, unseen, prepared for you and only for you."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
Elisa cradles Yuliana, and Yuliana relaxes into her arms, with no fear nor thought that she might drop her such a long way down. There is no safer place than here, in her arms; this is where Yuliana is safest. She knows this from so many long nights, wearied from the toll of her Sight, and Elisa all that held her together as her spirit wavered and her mind ached.
Those long, thick folds of her robes will help keep her warm, at least, as they step into the biting cold of Kaffeklubben Island. This is the island closest to Heaven, the sun ever-risen, and the temperature is biting cold. Yuliana couldn't step out here without shoes, certainly.
But Elisa is so impressive.
A hand against Elisa's arm, Yuliana looks out, as the great gates which lock the inner bailey to safety swing open before them. (They are large enough to welcome a war machine inside; even a Meltrandi at her full force can step comfortably through.) Further out, through the outer gates, the edges of the island beckon; an artificial wharf offers a place for ships to hide themselves, should any be capable of breaking through the vast sheets of ice which weigh the seawater down around their island. (The Salamis Kai which Elisa was kind enough to let Parminder -- procure -- from Britannia is parked along one side of it; it has an icebreaker attached to its nose, to wit, so it can take off without trouble. He's called it the Shandor, apparently after his boyfriend from back when he was in university. He was an architect, until he got killed by a stray wanzer leg. Tragic.) Those planks stretch out, into the sea, sturdy enough to support tonnes of machinery.
"Hidden...?" Yuliana wonders, looking out at those slabs of ice. She can't imagine hiding anything of size in the middle of all that bright white glare. She looks up to Elisa, legs all tucked about Elisa's arm. "It was prepared for me? Whatever do you mean, Elya?" She's dying of curiosity, which means, of course, she's hanging on Elisa's every word. Surely that's not intentional.
<Pose Tracker> Elisa Kafim has posed.
Elisa will not drop Yuliana. She walks with as much care as can be mustered, which in her case is quite a bit. There is no deception on this part either; Elisa's steps are measured, but she does not pretend to be casual about Yuliana. She would never!
Elisa's bare feet crunch into the snow and ice, keeping fine grip and keeping her well upright... without the complications one might expect of the feeling of frigidity on her skin, or for that matter the idea of frostbite.
Out, and out, and out...
Elisa glances to the Salamis Kai, but only glances. She then continues, on those planks, and Yuliana inquires, so Elisa smiles more widely. It is, of course, hidden quite well...
"Out, out beyond this place," Elisa explains, before she answers.
"I mean to say that I prepared it for you, of course. A triumph of power." Sure, there was 'help', from a certain young engineer, but... No, this is primarily Elisa's doing.
"Watch, and wait," she says, and comes to a stop on the wharf, lifting her spare hand up towards the sky. The water begins to churn.
"Come to me," she says. "The avatar of the Void... she who stands at the boundary!"
Elisa's hair begins to lift from her shoulders, rising all around her in an unseen wind. "Come forth--"
"THRESHOLD QUEEN, EMPTEAR!"
The sea itself boils as power drags Elisa's gift from the depths.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
Of course Elisa is not casual about Yuliana; none could challenge the care she expresses, holding her wife in her arm.
(If they dared, Yuliana would destroy them for their insolence.)
Yuliana's cheeks are rosy from the chill, but surely not just that, looking up at that wide smile. "Oh, Elya!" She bubbles, all enthusiasm, leaning into her arm so her legs can merrily kick outwards. "You must show me!"
As if anticipating that she can't wait, Elisa advises she does before she can say it in so many words; her smile is warm, though the air is not, as she turns her gaze from her wife back forward again. "Ah..?" She asks, attention drawn to the sea, growing rowdy as a storm. What terrifying power!
The avatar of the Void...
Yuliana's frills ruffle in that mighty wind, as they lift up alongside her brow. The ice shifts, and BREAKS, melting crumbling shattering into the water as the sea is broken by a single sharp, green point, large as Elisa and her grand gestures. Another, and another -- a crest? a crown -- and it becomes clear that they are no jagged spires of some forgotten land.
This is the head of Emptear, large enough that Yuliana could stand easily in one of her four sharp eyes, dull without internal power. It is an external power -- Elisa's power -- which moves her, now, as she rises from the sea. Up, and up, and up, that jagged dancer with no weapons to speak of, water flecking from the strange fibers of her scarf. Yuliana knows at once, though she has never been gifted with magic, just how much strength must be involved in calling this... machine?... from the depths. Certainly she is dwarfed; at some point she had to stop craning her neck up, and had to lean her whole body back to behold Emptear rising.
One of her elegant legs lifts, to plant itself in the shallower water, at the island's edge. This close, she is more a mountain than a machine -- but even now she is risen, the Threshold Queen is equipped with no clear weapons at all.
Even her chest is hollow and unguarded; her heart lies in the middle, a rough circle of curled black petals or jaws clamped shut, connected only by fragile wires to the rest of her frame. A terrible -- familiar -- feeling emanates from that bared heart, exposed to all the world.
Exposed to Elisa.
"She's beautiful," Yuliana gasps, hands balled tightly in Elisa's robes to draw on her steadiness and support. "Magnificent... boyevaya podruga, she is mine? Truly?"
<Pose Tracker> Elisa Kafim has posed.
All that enthusiasm is rewarding to Elisa. And it is all worth it, in moments. The ice shifts and breaks, and Elisa makes no complaint of the sheer focus that is required to move something of this nature, in this way, at this scale. It is her power, and it is within Her domain, this terrible machine, this glorious avatar. It is indeed a crown, and Elisa moves her, but this jagged dancer rises all the same. Rises, and rises, and rises, until she stands, much larger even than Elisa, a terrifying mountain with no obvious weapons. She does not explain fully--not yet.
That familiar feeling is exposed, and...
"Yes," Elisa breathes to Yuliana. "She is yours. She was made for you, and only for you. You are she who can wield her. And she belongs to you, now."
"Let me show you..."
Elisa begins to rise from the ground, a giant next to a colossus, and she rises up, up, up before her, until she reaches that central 'heart', and picks Yuliana up, to gently offer her a path towards the center.
"Go on," she says, eyes agleam.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
Yuliana has so much enthusiasm for Elisa's works, the beautiful things she creates. But this is no dragon; Emptear does not bleed, in that strange way Elisa's kaiju do.
The Threshold Queen is stranger, still.
Yuliana's heart pounds in her chest as Elisa murmurs to her, all wound up in excitement and anticipation and terrible recognition. "Oh, Elya... you've made all this, just for me... I'm so happy!" It's a wonderful gift, isn't it?
"Oh!" She gasps, as Elisa offers to show her, and abandons all conceits of gravity. She looks down as the ground leaves them, and she's quietly glad she isn't afraid of heights.
(She was, a little, when she was young; she got over it VERY quickly when she started climbing over wanzers. Exposure therapy works!)
She slips out of the crook of Elisa's arm to stand in her palms, instead, a hand steadying herself on one of her dark fingers as she's offered to Emptear's heart. Like jaws opening up or a flower meeting light those jagged structures unfurl; Yuliana looks up, to Elisa, searching for confirmation. She meets her gleaming eyes, and she smiles. "Here I go," she says, as she hops from Elisa's hand onto the outstretched planks of that black heart. She steps inside --
It closes. Perhaps the metaphor is a venus flytrap, after all.
Black crystal with green fold embedded inside rises up on all sides, within the cockpit; the effect feels endless, even inert, as her face reflects off all surfaces. There's jewellery held prominently along one crystal, and Yuliana slips it on; bracelets for her wrists, anklets for her feet, bands for the snakes behind her, a tiara with crystals set at her temples and central to her forehead. The green fold quartz gleams off the gold, resonates; so too do the quartz crystals stitched into the dancer's scarf she picks up, alongside it.
But -- beyond all these crystals, the interlocking patterns... "Psycommu," Yuliana frowns, observing the limits of her cockpit. She has plenty of room to turn; though those black crystals line the sides of the heart, the floor is clear. "But, it can't..."
Yuliana could tell Elisa about all the experiments which went nowhere, of course. Psychoframe has never worked for her. It's beyond her, why her wife would bother to make the cockpit from that material. Is it just a statement?
One embedded Fold Crystal is larger, than the others, laid into a flat-sloped crystal at the forefront of the cockpit; black spires rise to either side of it, themselves tipped in green. Yuliana looks to the left of one of those crystals and knows at once what to do with it; her hand slams down on the crystal, as her tendrils whip out to grasp the crystals at either side.
... and words appear, on one of those dark, reflective surfaces
--------------------------------- | Llyph ot th'ioll | | EMPTEAR | | Y-yth'yollyshy-k... OK | | Ll:o sh'jsth'ianish llkh'ioll | | Tiallth'ou-j llkh'ioth'you | ---------------------------------
"Destroy creation..." Yuliana echoes, and she is troubled, briefly, by a frown. She swallows it down and presses down, too, more fiercely, promise and declaration: "Emptear, set up!"
The effects -- inside and out -- are dramatic.
Outside, it becomes clear just why that beating heart was exposed so flagrantly. It isn't. The Void cracks asunder around Emptear's heart, and emptiness floods creation; black beyond black, the abyss consumes her chest entire, as twin shadow-snakes twist and emerge from her back. Yuliana is apart from the world, inside Emptear, isolated by a moat of nonexistence she has formed around her.
It's just her, really -- amplified beyond measure. The same cracks which annul psychic power beside her now annul EVERYTHING, beside her.
Inside --
"Ahhh--!!" Yuliana gasps, falling forward, catching herself on that crystal. (Before Emptear can crush anything important; how wise, to place the initialisation pillar so.) What was glimpsed is seen plain, now, and she is dizzy to sickness; she looks up and meets Her eyes, eyes and eyes and eyes, all agleam with adoration. "My head!", she cries, clutching it with a hand -- she does not realise, yet, the way Emptear mirrors her motions -- and the pounding in her heart may well tear it right through her chest, now. Emptear transmits her speech, though she's defended by nonexistence; it carries, outside. "This is... this is everything..." She talks herself through it, through the overwhelming feelings, feelings not fit for human hearts or minds.
"Every part of nothing... it's inside me! Is -- is this what it's like...?! I'm--!"
Bigger than her body. She's bigger than her body, more expansive than her mind, and she realises all at once that the visions captured in the reflections of those crystals may as well be her own eyes. There, in front of her -- so small, in front of her --
"Elya," Yuliana focuses on her, and some semblance of stability returns to her unmoored voice as she recognises her. She orients on her, as she straightens, flexing a single, great claw.
"Hahaha... hahahahahaha...!!!" Some semblance, at least -- her laughter is still barely-hinged, as she occupies so MUCH space, as she looks at the physical world and another entirely. (Emptear has two sets of eyes; nothing about her design is accidental.) "So much... it's so much... I'm so much...!"
That claw rises, to Emptear's cheek, as Yuliana lifts her hand to her face for a moment. "Oh, Elya!" She says, again, delighted, and she reaches out -- to scoop Elisa up in those vast claws, and lift her up to Emptear's cheek, instead.
She is careful, nuzzling her, but clearly entirely enthralled.
"This is wonderful!" She crows, she decides, finally, as her shock is replaced by her love. "Why, this must be how you feel all the time...!"
<Pose Tracker> Elisa Kafim has posed.
Elisa is beaming, every bit the blushing bride as she gives this gift to her wife, designed only for her. Elisa's heart pounds--does it? Does it really?--It should, in any case. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that it pulses. And now, Yuliana says she is happy. And...
"I am glad," Elisa says with her full voice, cradling Yuliana until she lets her in. And there she goes, and then--Then Elisa is to wait.
She waits, and she sees the effects. Emptiness floods through, and Elisa watches in delight. She continues to float there, and she waits, easily avoiding the motions of Emptear and hearing her voice. It is 'everything'...
"Yuliana," she says, and she loves that unhinged laughter, too. Yes, there is nothing accidental in her design, and Elisa, giant as she is, is scooped up by a giant even larger by far.
"Yes," she says. "Now, we feel together," she says. "This is what shall protect you, when you dance. This is the solution I found, that I created, to safeguard my most precious one."
"I am so glad that you like it." She smiles widely, and she has a very human number of teeth.
Unlike Emptear.
She strokes Emptear's cheek, gently, lovingly, and smells the salt sea that is slowly turning to nothing, too, against her.
"It is all for you."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
There -- her name. Her meaning, spoken. (Speaking.) Yuliana beams, and this, at least, is only coincidentally mirrored in the machine; Emptear's too-many teeth are painted up in an eternal sharp grin, all too ready to consume.
"Together," Yuliana echoes her, and Emptear echoes her, one like the other, one becoming the other. There are no limits between them, and why would there be? She and Elisa have never needed boundaries. "This is my protection... oh, in something like this, nothing can touch me!"
Elisa touches her cheek, and two of Emptear's eyes dim as Yuliana closes her eyes -- less a normal darkness and more a focus on what lies beyond, with the Voidframe reverberating through her skull. Her sigh comes through, entirely content, as the weight of a solid shadow in her palm translates to the woman she can see outside.
"It's all for me... really, Elya, you... you've given me such a grand and marvellous gift. Now... now I can dance again. Now I can be Her Gate without fear... now, you can open the Gate without destroying me!" Never mind that the flood of all nonexistence into her tiny chassis threatened to overwhelm her entirely; now she's overwhelmed by her love, instead, and she's fine. She's fine!
"... and, you know, She is smiling, too..." With Her jaws and Her jaws and Her jaws, not entirely horizontal, entirely pleased. "... oh, you've done a marvellous job, Elya. I think so, too." As if it's not her own opinion she was translating, first, in praising her.
<Pose Tracker> Elisa Kafim has posed.
In something like this... That is, indeed, exactly the idea. It is a thing of might and beauty, of horror and terror, and it is Yuliana's.
That content sigh comes through, and Elisa smiles further, when Yuliana speaks of the gift, and what she can do. "Indeed," Elisa says. "I promised you that I would find a way, my darling. And so, we have. So we shall do far, far more, than simply 'speak' now. "
Sure, it was overwhelming, but such trifling things matter little. A momentary difficulty. Elisa knows Yuliana can be far grander.
"Ahhhh," Elisa says, and closes her eyes in contentment. "Good," the witch answers. "I am pleased, then. All is as it must be."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
Yuliana is a very tough woman, after all. She's been through harder things than this and come out singing. (Is she singing, or does the music just sound that way..?)
"Finally, we can bring them the truth..." Yuliana murmurs, content, as Elisa speaks of the way. It would be easy, if Yuliana's flinch reaction to destroying creation spoke to a disagreement with Elisa's goals and methods. It would be easy -- morally uncomplicated -- a matter of Yuliana being used for her strange powers, in the way of so many.
It's wrong, though. A single flinch reaction doesn't make for any real complaints about how -- or why.
The 'why', at least, is more her sin than her wife's. Yuliana's a very vindictive woman -- a green-eyed monster -- and even if dragging reality into this world will make things better, that doesn't mean she's not relishing getting back at all the Newtypes who flaunt their connections in her face. It's a little of revenge, too. She's allowed that much. She's been through so much.
How lucky she is to have a wife who will do anything to make her happy!
But Elisa is happy, too, and it lightens Yuliana's heart, though she can feel herself inside its walls. She is there, and she is HERE, occupying so much space, safeguarding Elisa in her vast dark fingers. So much. It's so much -- "You are pleased, She is pleased... all is well!" Yuliana focuses on Elisa, smile in her voice if not reflected exactly on Emptear's face. (Hers is warmer, now, and not as vicious as it was moments prior.) "Come! You must teach me how your clever invention works, my dearest zhenushka!"
And as she moves with Emptear, she is Emptear, and all the power to destroy creation never quite displaces her mind.
Fully.