Dreams of Corant 3

Apologies for such a delay. I was off getting married this past weekend, and that has a tendency to take up a lot of time. The wedding was about as perfect as a wedding can be, and I thought the Edward Gorey theme worked very well indeed. Pictures on the way later.

For now, we're finishing up the story of Corant.


When the party met Corant, they were sneaking around a distant village where the people had been slain and piled up like garbage. A few rather nervous armed men were going through some of the houses, taking anything useful as supplies. When the group did some covert investigating, they noticed the signs of some horrible damage done to a few of the bodies, as if they'd been tortured by someone with a very bad temper.

A bit of listening revealed that the men worked for someone named Lun, who they were more than a little spooked by. Further sneaking revealed one of the houses had been set up as living space; a pot of something pungent was bubbling over the fire, and inside a rail-thin woman hard at work bandaging another woman. The other woman looked unconscious, laying on a table, and her arms and legs were stumps, currently wrapped in fresh bandages.

Concluding that some heinous business was going on, the party bushwhacked the enemy. They steamrolled the mercenaries, and when the thin woman came running out, they put the hurt on her too. In fact, Lun gets taken down quickly.

That was when the sobbing, laughing swarms of black birds came boiling out of Lun's house. The door burst, and a limbless woman came floating out towards the party.


Corant by ~Galindorf on deviantART


They managed to put Corant down, but they were badly shaken by the experience. They thought she had been some innocent made into a floating battery for evil magic, and thought to purify and consecrate her body the following day, at dawn. But in the night, they discovered that it was not easy to kill Corant. She woke up and attacked them again, resulting in the death of one of the party.

Mearowyn was later resurrected by the priests of Dumuzi, who sacrificed one of their own to balance out the debt to the underworld, but she found that even after Corant's final death that there was a splinter of Corant left in her. The aftermath of Corant's 'sharing' slowly made Corant's story apparent.

By the time the group met Corant, Corant was fully immersed in the dark solipsisms of Shepherd philosophy. She was a library of collected secrets, which provided her the means to impose her view of the world on the world around her and inflict her emotions and experiences on others. Lun by that point was insane, but utterly loyal to her older sister, attempting to learn from Corant as best as she could.

The Credo that the Shepherd had given Corant still hung around her neck, encased in a small metal book, and the party took it with them. It was the subject of much speculation. I used an excerpt from the works of Aleister Crowley (Liber V vel Reguli) as a basis for this riddle, modifying the words to point the Credo further inward and making it more a vicious cycle than a tenet for exploration. Corant's Credo was thus:

I am Omniscient, for naught exists for me unless I Know it. I am Omnipotent, for naught occurs save by my Comprehension, my soul's expression through my Will to be, to do, to suffer the symbols of itself. I am Omnipresent, for naught exists where I am not, who fashioned Purity as a condition of my consciousness of myself, who am the center of all, and my circumference the frame of my own wisdom.
I am the All, for all that exists for me is a necessary expression in thought of some tendency of my nature, and all my thoughts are only the letters of my Name.
I am the One, for all that I am is not the absolute All, and all my all is mine and never another's; mine, knowing there are others like myself in expression and illusion, but unlike in essence and truth.
I am the None, for all that I am is the perfect image of the imperfect; each partial phantom must perish in the vision of itself, each form fulfill itself by devouring its equated sins, and satisfying its need to be the Absolute by attainment of annihilation.

One disturbing effect of all this was Corant's bottomless vitality. The party could not figure out why she kept reviving after taking tremendous physical punishment. Later, it was revealed that Corant had Lun cut off Corant's limbs, because Corant didn't want to touch anything (the world was filthy and corrupt, you see), and in fact, the process of keeping her limbs stumps was an ongoing process, as Corant's vindictive body kept trying to grow them back. The party found the steaming pot in the village hut to contain a poultice made of liblit flower, which if ingested puts the mind in a fugue state where one cannot lie.

It turned out that liblit flower was what could kill Corant, and a single knife coated in the juice of the little purple blossom put an end to Corant. As Mearowyn said afterwards, “She couldn't bear to face the truth.”

And that was true.

Art demands Art

This was originally posted under a pen-name blog of mine, some while ago. Due to my artist recently creating something based on this work, I'm reposting it here.

I can't emphasize how well she captured Sinclair.

There were only three ways to survive Between, according to Sinclair. You had the strength to take what you needed, you were smart enough to get what you needed, or you always had what others needed. Sinclair took it one step further; s/he made certain others had needs.

In the Between, Sinclair's fingertips were a number of unconnected hovels, husks that emulated the lost souls who always came back to them, again and again; wreckage, broken architecture, a smashed and featureless facade hiding the gaudy velvet synesthesia of whatever mad dreams and fancies lolled senseless within. Sinclair had many customers, some who served, and some of whom never actually left.

Today, Sinclair was predominantly female, with a lean, arrogant face. Heavy auburn hair hung around it like banyan vines, twisted into braids, and writhing out from them were snake-skeleton tattoos, sunning themselves across bare, pale shoulders, tails hidden at the nape. Full lips were touched with dark gloss, pressed into a regal pout, and a pair of silver rings stitched the bottom lip. The body was slender and efficient, Sinclair's preference, with the sort of impossible proportions that drew the eye of man and woman both. No matter what flesh Sinclair was wearing, the eyes were always the same; blue and cold, like arctic sky, poisonous as mercury.

Those who knew Sinclair understood that it was not inattention that kept those eyes unfocused, always seeming to slide away from things in their view. These eyes were fixed on a lanky man of sinew and bone, wrapped in Betweener rags, who was pleading for clemency. It was accounting day, when Sinclair collected what was due. Unlike the Horse Trader, another of the great merchants Between, Sinclair loved debt, and adored drawing business out over months and years.

To one side stood Emily, Sinclair's accountant, dapper and autistic, a prodigy of numbers that Sinclair had bought from the King of Fools a while back. She murmured the man's accounts over and over in her small, reedy voice, which always made Sinclair think of a very small violin. Two others indebted to Sinclair kept the man penned, two very loyal sheepdogs who craved disobedience from their flock. Neither had the wits or will to break Sinclair's hold on them, but they were happy with their job, and that was as Sinclair preferred. A few others looked on, mostly those also in debt. Walter, a slender fair-haired man with uncommonly long fingers and an excellent kinesthetic sense, occupied space next to Sinclair, carefully holding a couple of kittens, who fussed incessantly.

"You don't have anything more to trade," Sinclair announced softly. "You come here and plead to me."

The man was still reaching forward, as if he were drowning and Sinclair might save him. "I can't dream anymore!"

"That's because your dreams are on lease. I keep them in a very lovely silk and silver Faberge egg near my bedside," Sinclair said. "My books aren't even; you'll have to give something... come forward, and let me see your hand."

The two sheepdogs were very disappointed that the man didn't even hesitate. Sinclair made a mental note to punish them on general principle for not being polite; there was too much brutal eagerness showing. When the man reached out a hand, Sinclair took it, running long fingers over it, cool as snakeskin. To Sinclair's flesh, the flesh of another was a book. Reading deeper than veins and muscle and bone, Sinclair deciphered the riddles and metaphors of blood and nerve, rewriting some of what was found there, rearranging the patterns of body chemistry.

Looking at the man, Sinclair smiled, and offered a hand, palm open.

The man knew what this was, and there was a flicker of reluctance, and fear, but he knew there was no choice.

Sinclair hated leaving people choices. They should just do as they were supposed to. And this one did; he licked the palm. Almost immediately, he seized up, made a startled manikin, and fell to the floor, twitching slightly. Sinclair tilted a glance at Walter.

"Walter, sweetheart, go ahead and let the children play."

Walter, smiling softly at being noticed, walked over to the man, and set the kittens down. The little creatures immediately started clawing and biting, tugging and bounding about the immobile body. Walter patted them fondly and then moved back to his place near Sinclair. Sinclair silently hushed Emily, and then looked at the line of debtors. This happened almost every time, and it was never tiring to watch their faces.

"This man can feel everything that is happening to him," Sinclair told their hungry faces. "He will not die, unless I let him, but he'll be spending the rest of the day under the happy needlepoint attention of kittens. Each hour, I shall have dear Walter add two more kittens, until there are twenty. And they won't tire of him; I made certain of that. Now, this man is short but one day in his dues. Some of you, Emily tells me, are short far more than that this month. Consider that I have a sense of proportion. Consider this, and consider something to offer me when I call you here next. Those who have nothing may leave for now. The worthy may stay, and offer what they will."

And just as always, many of the hollow-eyed clients slithered out, fearful, addled in their need for Sinclair, and what Sinclair had for them. And just as always, Sinclair knew that some would now offer up far more than they would have. They had heard the stories of Sinclair's other methods, the penchant for thieving the body of another even while they were still using it, the horrible intrusion of Sinclair's body into their own.

They crept forward, careful.

Emily began the next page of debts, and Sinclair whispered to her to tally up payments, fixing eyes on the kittens, who gnawed and pricked the paralyzed man's hand raw, content and simple in their cruelty.

Little darlings, thought Sinclair, and smiled.