#168 Septua Sanguis/The Eight Temptations: Delphi-Ch.11

We have finally arrived at Delphi, where Sorrow receives a vision. She solves the mystery of why the humans are dying, but leaves unclear about her actual question, and other parts of the vision. 

Transcript

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Setua Sanguis The Eight Temptations Chapter eleven Delphi The cold stone seeps through her flesh and dives into her bones, dragging her into the earth. The darkness resting upon her eyelids only furthers her descent, causing her head to nod and weave until her chin settles upon her chest. The stone wall behind her bears the weight of her weariness, and she rests, truly rests fully and deeply into the sunken chamber. It is strange, she thinks, that a windowless alcove could be an opening to whole new realms when it is scarce scarcely larger than a burrow. The Aditan, they call it the holiest of holies, so holy that its translation is the place not to be entered. But sorrow has entered and been here before. She is one of the few to witness the receiving of oracles. She draws her robes tighter, noting their dampness. The chamber is moist from the mist rising out of a large fissure in the limestone floor. The fissure also expels a sharp mineral odor which stripes the stone walls, the cracks filling with white chalk over the eons. The scent rises into sorrow's nostrils again and again, a ceaseless reminder of the hidden depths. Sorrow struggles to open her eyes. She begs them to look at what she has already seen. The Pythia seated upon her bronze tripod, suspended over the fissure, a gentle sway of her seat, the twirling and flicking of the laurel branch, dusting off old energy, inviting new. The ritual of the laurel branch reminds sorrow of her quill, its spirals of air spinning tiny vortices of energy into the timeless art of cleansing, clearing, crafting. Sorrow forces the to forces the tombstones of her eyes open. The priest is steadfast and immovable, meticulous in his watchfulness. His duty for the Pythia is beyond care. It is sacred, and he carefully monitors both her swain and the Omphallos. Such a strange object, the Umphalos. Sorrow suspects it is vital, yet has not realized why. There is so little in this tiny chamber, everything exact and precise, here for its purpose and no other. So the Omphallos must be the same, and while it has an obvious purpose to channel steam, beyond that it seems decorative, just a fancy hive of glittering bees. And what it's made from sorrow isn't sure, but the shape is hived, and it's covered by a woollen web. Each juncture of the web is knotted with a gemstone, but not at random. The stones create a pattern across the hive with distinct geometries, all of them flickering in the torchlight. Every gem sparkles and dances, flashing the bright eyes of a bee and the colorful wings. Sorrow watches the bees, they lull her until she fights no more. Her body slumps against the wall and her eyelids close. This marks another downward pull, deeper onto a path sorrow knows, yet has never walked. She can't have walked a path that has never lived, a thread just barely alive, a web only now being spun, and yet somehow sorrow knows her path, knows her way, for this is the way of the Pythia. Sound rises from the depths just as the Pythia continues their joint descent, this one through sound. But the Pythia does not hum or sing or even search for notes. She is simply a vessel of sound. Sound emanates from her mouth, her throat, her chest, her abdomen, every part of her vibrates. She is sound. Then the bees, they too sound. They add their buzzing, their winged harmonics, rising and falling until triads become elevated sixth. After a few moments, or maybe hours, the stone chamber also sounds, it ripples and rings with tones, new ones moving in all directions, overlapping, interlapping, canceling, releasing, creating sets of radial waves until they release into silence, delineating sound into story. All of this happens through that mysterious interplay of sound, of energy, and it's understood by very few and seen by even fewer. The Pythia, the bees, the stone, they do not stop, even though there are moments of silence. Sorrow crags her eyes open, promising that this is the last time she will force them up. She notices the priest again, not a muscle has moved, and he is unaffected by what he sees. The pithia sway, the bees hive, sorrow empties. She tumbles into the silence, into the sound, the weighted marking of time. She flows through the depths of the chamber until steam becomes water and heat becomes a blossoming vision within her mind. The vision reveals itself slowly and what she sees is herself. She is walking up a mountain, this mountain, and she didn't have to walk, she chose to walk. Such an unusual place, nestled between fault lines, deep fissures lacing the rock, a crystal clear spring, waters sweet as milk, a quiet valley below, the ground, alive, trembling, living, breathing, aware, as she knew it would be, as it must be. For one to hear, if one seeks, there is only one way, yet many entrances into the labyrinth which everyone must walk. It is demanded. If one seeks to ask, one walks the labyrinth. The vision blurs as sorrow shifts against the wall, easing her soreness. She notices the tones suddenly collide, a sharp vibration descending into a minor before fading into the vision. Twenty columns rise into the sky, austere sentinels, neither stone nor rock, protecting what she seeks, here and not here, a stately threshold stripping away, she steps through, the first step, giving back what is wanted. There is no other way in than to give back. The labyrinth demands that all be erased, all of it, not only asking, but seeking, wanting, desiring, the stains of desire erased, bleached, washed, wiped, removed as much as can be. The looping turns, roundabout angles, misdirections, never wrong, always home, home center, navel Omphallos beehive, belly button of earth, navel of universe now, seek to ask what is already answered. The vision fades as the limestone floor bites into her flesh. Sorrow shifts again and stretches, her eyelids fluttering for a moment, and she glimpses gemstone bees. Sorrow has placed her hands on a similar omphallos, the one in the center of the labyrinth, and she asked a question, but it was not about the dying humans. It was the question she's lived far too long without asking the one her heart pleads for. Sorrow slides down against the wall until she lies upon the floor. She curls into herself a question mark of body, and wonders why she finally dared to ask, after all this time, even while knowing that any answer given will be a riddle, a knotted web, a portrayal of energies, whatever is present in the moment. Perhaps this is why she dared, because oracles aren't truth says, there is no such thing. Oracles are threadsayers. They speak the web of destiny in motion, which is the greatest riddle of all. Answers don't live in words, they live in webs, which is why Sorrow didn't ask about the dying humans. She knew that answer would be knotted into any question she asked, so she asked an easy one, one which terrifies her. Sorrow's cheek rests upon the floor and a chill races through her. She shudders it grips the stone as her mind flings outward, suddenly leaving her body behind. The great entrance of Delphi rushes toward her, the jagged rock and dry soil. She arrives quite suddenly and stares at the two mottoes carved and chival chiseled with Greek letters Know thyself nothing in excess. Sorrow doesn't understand why these mottos are offered to her. She's seen them numerous times and considered them many more. Why this when there is so much to know? A whisper comes from within, a reminding voice, a remembering time from before, from beyond. It is up to her, the experiencer to receive the answer which has been lost. Lost. Saro stares at the mountain of rock called Telphi lost as though every question asked is already answered. She feels destiny's web tighten around her, a yank, a pull, a tug, a definite, defined. She wonders if there is actually a choice here, and if so what? The Greek letters fade into mineral scents and moist steam. Asaro fills herself back in the cat in the chamber. She doesn't know how the Pythia manages to descend into destiny's web without losing her mind, but as she opens her eyes, there the Pythia sits upon her tripod, with bees twitching and crawling, buzzing in some strange unison. Suddenly their colored wings strike out and the woolen net lifts off the umphalos, carried high into the chamber. Sorrow can't tell if her eyes are actually open or closed, but the bees seem to reach greater and greater heights as she is funneled deeper and deeper into some mayhem, spiraling and whirring into a web of her own making by her own questions, her own seeking. The flickering light of the torches gives way to darkness and then to speckled light. Sorrow feels soil beneath her and is immediately alarmed. Where is she? How is she not watching this vision? Why is she suddenly inside of it? Alive. Sorrow doesn't move. She carefully looks up and sees trees and leaves, dappled sunlight flirting with the clouds. She pushes up to find herself surrounded by a forest, not a bavarian forest, nor a rocky mountain forest, nor a kenti. Those forests are equally alive as this one, but this one is unique with a very noticeable difference, and it makes itself known. A huge walnut tree booms across the landscape, its roots clawing the soil with each step. Behind it a tentative and trembling sapling totters just learning to walk. She's in a forest. Sorrow is here in her favorite place, and that walnut tree looks exactly like Valonia. She can remember the countless hours of her youth climbing and talking and listening to her wise arboreal friend. Sorrow relaxes, her alarm lessens, and she smiles softly. Seeing a young one learning to walk and learning to fall is comforting. She still knows this is a vision and she's inside of it. She can feel the overarching presence of the vision, and maybe that's okay. Sorrow hears another buzz, but it's not from the bees. This buzz is in her ear to the right. She looks over her shoulder just as a tiny flock of black wings careens past. They land upon her robe, a mob of ladybugs speckling her velvet. Sorrow holds very still as they tuck their underwings and settle like old friends. A strange grunting noise causes her to look up and she surveys the forest. There is a clearing some ways off, but before walking she considers the ladybugs. Then very carefully she walks to the clearing. The sun beats down on a woman straight and true. Her dress clings to the sweat of her back, the cloth so thin it reveals every curve with nothing beneath. The woman is free of adornment except for one piercing, a tiny bone in her left earlobe. Her skin is bronzed from sun and birth, and her knees are callused, likely due to kneeling on the earth, which she does now. A mound of dirt rises above the woman, dwarfing her youthful frame. She leans down into a tunnel which opens below the mound. It is packed and firm, and the woman pulls on a dark braid, hand over hand over hand, as endless as the sun. The woman draws the braid and coils it into concentric circles, nesting them within each other. She counts as she pulls, seventy seven becomes one hundred, becomes two, and they do not stop. She counts and counts until the day wears as thin as her dress, then she stops. She stands and releases the braid. It falls to the earth with a quiet thump, and she wipes a forearm across her shorn head, the sweat dripping to one side. She reties a knot at the base of her skirt and positions it higher along her thigh. She presses her palms into her lower back and arches. The ache in her body is palpable, running so deep it clings to the bareness of her bones. The woman kneels again, resumes her labor, she counts and coils, forever it seems, until she stops, but not because the day is so thin, but because she has seen something. Safely lodged between the plaited hair is a miniature replica of a dog. It has a lean frame, loyal legs and keen eyes, a sighthound. Tears well in the woman's eyes as she dislodges the dog and holds it to her chest. Chang An, the woman whispers. The ladybugs suddenly take wing and sorrow fills her feet lift off the earth. The landscape whips before her and then slowly slides back into focus as her feet return to the soil. Stars now overhang a night sky. The silvery dreams seem as languid as the fireflies. The woman stands before a fire, holding the replica in front of her. The flames lick at the shape, and she murmurs a story too low to hear. Then she clutches the dog with sudden desperation and falls to her knees. A howl of pain escapes into the night, filling the air. Tears stream down her cheeks, only to fall hard and heavy as stone upon the earth. The granite edges of pain raking at her soul. Screams tear her through her body, and the suffering is a torment. The woman howls again and again until finally she relents. Her body falls to the earth, emptied of suffering, full of sorrow. Sorrow. She's the one they run from, hide from, ignore and placate, refuse to admit, refuse to submit. They postpone and procrastinate, do everything imaginable except allow her sorrow, the truth. This is what she truly is, the truth, the acceptance, the tears and pain, the renewal. Cold limestone presses upon her cheek, and the fissure whines in her ear. Sorrow opens her eyes to see the Pythia lumbering on her tripod, a cargo ship on an oceanic voyage, sailing through a Web as slick as sleet and winged with as many waves. Sorrow is terrified of destiny and her web, even as she longs to see the threads. She wonders if she could receive an oracle, a true one, not just a vision. And she wonders if she would know the difference because there clearly is one. Sorrow pulls her robes tighter, the cold seeping through. She wishes she could wrap herself in shadows, but they are not allowed here, quite literally barred from crossing the threshold of the Aditan as though an invisible barrier prevents their entry. Suddenly sorrow is ripped across and down and through the chamber at high speed. She sees and smells and tastes stone, then water, earth, and fiery depths before leaving her breath behind. She is taken somewhere where there are threads everywhere. They entangle her in a claustrophobic mesh. She struggles to free herself but is surrounded on all sides, every angle, and her movements only tighten the web. She can't breathe, she can't think. She stops. This is a vision she tells herself. Fully inhabit it. Sorrow closes her eyes and feels the suspension, the threads clutching at her body. She feels herself dangle and sway. She is safe. She opens her eyes. She studies the knots in the web. Each one is tied with a stone, so similar to the Aditan, and now she knows she's part of it. She is here. She is part of a living, breathing umphalos, a hive of cosmic proportions, a web that she cannot imagine. She is dwarfed by the enormity surrounding her, one tiny knot in a web of infinity, and every one of her movements causes the web to jerk and rise, twist and yank, tighten and constrict, or worse, some movements cause it to loosen and she falls. Not all the way, she's always entangled. Sorrow grabs for her shadows but only clings to herself. She swears she heard a laugh when she tried. She closes her eyes again, feeling sick with helplessness, wondering if this is how humans feel. She can't imagine feeling more helpless than she already does. She opens her eyes again and looks around at the stones, and then she notices one, a singular knot, but it is not tied with a stone. This one is knotted to a human, and sorrow recognizes her. This human has bronzed skin and eight distinctly colored threads reaching out from her navel. Each colored thread stretches equidistance from the others, just as sorrow thought, hoped would exist. But this means little. Yes, it shows that humans can come, but there is no way for sorrow to see this outside a vision. And that's when a ninth thread shimmers, silver and fine. It is attached to the tongue of the human, a nisty thread. This is when sorrow knows, and it's so simple it's stupid. They are stupid, all eight of them. Their blunder is obvious. Every human already knows. The deities just need to ask. If a human says yes, they will live. If they say no or nothing, they will die.