Eysin: The Giggling Curtain | Ch. 21 - The Violet Monument of Grief and Suffering
Psychopunk is back; this time with Cosmic Horror. Warring sounds crank to 11, Ashera highlights Arkion's natural destructive potential against 300 000 years of pure war.
Ashera’s toes complete.
She flexes, kicks another Baltikon out.
Then—her attention narrows to a single point.
Bartel’s condensers—already violet-tainted—overload.
He tries to vent.
Too late.
White lightning floods the tear—not outward, but inward.
A perfect, silent detonation of pure stasis.
Everything freezes.
The remaining Baltikons—mid-strike, mid-dodge—hang suspended in the cloud like insects in amber, gold glow frozen in place.
Gremlins pause mid-scuttle, tiny mouths open in eternal shrieks.
Debris stops mid-fall.
Even the next Sampo volley—red sun streaking down—halts inches from the mist, caught in the field like a fly in honey, glowing, motionless.
Time itself seems to hold its breath.
Inside the stasis bubble, the white lightning coils around Ashera’s half-formed body—protective, patient.
She raises the Blindside—small in her giant hand now, like a letter-opener in the palm of a god, but humming with the full weight of the archive.
Comfortable. Familiar.
She turns the blade inward.
One heartbeat of absolute, eerie silence.
Then—crack.
She slashes the halted plasma ball trapped just outside the bubble.
The red sun splits clean—into a perfect, glowing crescent of raw force.
The crescent turns—obedient, inevitable—and screams upward, a violet-trimmed scythe of returned judgement.
It arcs across the sky, faster than thought, faster than mercy.
Far above, the Sampo’s crown—cannons still glowing from the volley—doesn’t even have time to register.
SLASH.
Clean decapitation.
The entire upper saucer shears off—heavy, steaming, tumbling end-over-end into the sea below like a coin flipped and lost forever.
Waves explode outward, rocking the fleet.
Inside the cloud, the stasis shatters.
Frozen Baltikons tumble free—unharmed, but disoriented, gold glow flickering as they reorient.
The pink-white mist rushes inward—imploding, feeding the forge.
Ashera concentrates the remaining plasma on herself.
Flesh of scrap and memory liquefies, runs like molten amethyst, then cools in perfect, transparent facets.
Bones of old hull plates fuse into crystalline ribs.
Skin of archived screams hardens into flawless violet glass.
The cloud contracts around her like a chrysalis closing.
She steps out—thirty stories tall, perfectly transparent violet glass.
Every loop of archived pain visible inside her like frozen lightning in crystal.
She is beautiful.
She is terrible.
She is complete.
Every soul looking toward her feels it —
disturbing visions flood minds and hearts
like private televisions tuned to the channel of their own despair.
One sees a childhood home burning.
Another hears a lover’s last breath on loop.
A third watches every war they ever fought replay in fast-forward,
always ending in the same child’s face asking “why?”
Personal losses.
Collective atrocities.
The weight of witnessed suffering made physical —
heavy as gravity,
intimate as a whisper in the ear.
This is the monument.
She looks up.
Sees the Canary hanging motionless in the sky —
amber halo faint,
bell whispering gentle questions
that somehow cut through her drone.
Unaffected.
Still scanning.
Still asking.
Judging?
Don’t look at me.
She raises the mirror shield —
vinyl-glass disc scratched with ancient cuneiform curses and love letters —
reflexive,
protective.
The shield catches Arkion’s gentle probe.
Reflects it.
Distorts it.
The pure question—Is this necessary? —
bounces back warped,
sharpened,
hostile.
21.1 – Zugzwang & Damocles’ Arsenal
Arkion’s zerk misreads the reflection as attack.
The amber halo turns crimson.
Arsenal arms involuntarily.
Fleet-wide NSS warning flashes red:
Damocles’ Arsenal incoming—the winds that draw blood.
TOLL.
A single, colossal toll —
cathedral bell forged from iron and wrath.
TOLL.
The dust ring spreads.
Each toll turns a particle into a sword,
a spear,
a projectile from his Arsenal.
Phoenix echoes flicker across his form—
fleeting blade-scales and crimson feathers
Blades phasing in and out
as the suit arms itself against its own will.
Fragility made weapon.
They rain in waves against the vinyl shield.
Collisions make the worst warring sound:
screams of war and suffering echoing across the Baltic—
the Arsenal weeping as it fights.
21.2 – Fleet Reaction & Vinu’s Call
Alexander: “Mon Dieu—what on EARTH is he DOING?!”
Arkion (strained over Clarity, dry as dust):
“It’s not me. Her shield’s forcing the attack. I think we need to do Sprite Surgery—delete her memories to stop the ‘chosis before she pulls the Moon. Someone pull the mirror off me.”
The fleet watches Arkion deplete himself against the invincible defense.
The warring sounds—screams of war and suffering—roll across the Baltic like a tide no one can outrun.
Despair creeps in—fists clench, old wounds ache, eyes sting.
Everyone looks to Vinu.
Vinu (calm, clipped, tired half-smile):
“I retired, remember?”
He slaps Alexander’s back—hard enough to rattle teeth.
“That’s your first big one. You’ve got this, superstar.”
Alexander freezes mid-flail.
Drama queen mask cracks.
Razor focus snaps in.
He exhales sharp, theatrical—like a diva preparing her solo.
“Before he runs out… three hours. Maybe less if he keeps being so DRAMATIC!”
Arkion (over Clarity, faint):
“Please go die in seven minutes.”
Alexander paces the deck like it’s a runway.
Voice rising and falling in perfect neurotic rhythm:
“A psychotic anomaly. It makes you attack… We need to draw her attention from the reflection! But with that tolling—mon Dieu, that SOUND—we’ll never out-threaten him! We need something BIGGER! Something FABULOUS!”
Cassius:
“Hey, at least you’re—Bloing!—getting massive upgrades.”
Arkion grunts:
“One more ‘bloing’ while I’m becoming the end of the world and I’m aiming lower.”
“Bloing is PROPHECY!” Cassius laughs, flipping right-side up with flair.
“Cassius!”
The entire fleet, exasperated unison.
Alexander snaps fingers like a conductor calling silence.
“Alright, darlings—PAY ATTENTION!
Defensive build only—no attacking her, or she’ll manipulate our zerks too.
Edda, Atlas—lock the squad down?”
“We’re ready.”
Alexander spins right up to Jarre-Pierre’s face, a breath short from the glowing ember singeing his lips.
Angry, snappy: “I thought you said you were out!”
“Got one from Cass, monsieur. I’d never hold out on you.”
He blows a spear of smoke away from their faces.
Alexander snaps back to LOUD:
“Can you turn water into a shield?”
“Oui.”
“In this case, Jarre-Pierre—biggest diamond shield you EVER made!
Bigger than us!
Bigger than her!
Bigger than the DRAMA!
Pool reds and greens —
and make it a SKY!”
Alexander spins to Cassius, eyes wild but reluctant to lean in—maybe his psychedelia is infectious, and he isn’t in the mood for ego death:
“Cassius—you saw what Ravana did to Pierre’s shield. Time for your psychic super-weapon, superstar. Turn the water-shield below her into a mirror—and make her believe what she sees is REAL! Expose only as long as Jarre’s shield holds.”
Cassius stands still like a statue, trying to keep it together.
“You’re asking for Solaris water?”
Alexander (dramatic gasp, hand to chest):
“Are you even with us anymore?”
“Mate, I am Solaris water on weekends.”
“Four more minutes and I’ll end you myself,” Arkion grumbles, strained but amused.
The squad moves out.
21.3 – Diamond and Solaris
The sea below Ashera begins to change.
First, the dead water ripples — not with wind, but with memory.
A shiver of old laughter, a lover’s last breath, a child’s unanswered “why? —all bubbling up like secrets the ocean kept too long.
Then the surface turns glassy, perfectly reflective—a mile-wide mirror blooming beneath her like a dark flower opening at midnight.
But it’s no ordinary reflection.
It’s Solaris Water—hallucination made liquid.
The sea forgets how to be water.
It becomes thick, slow, impossibly clear yet infinitely deep.
Every wave freezes mid-motion into fractal spirals that hurt to follow.
Reflections no longer obey reality:
The sky above shows stars that aren’t there tonight.
Clouds drift backward, unmaking themselves.
The moon wears Ashera’s own glass face like a mask—cracked, smiling the smile she never allowed herself.
Gremlins diving in come out wearing tiny admiral hats woven from their own drowned memories—saluting no one, confused but proud.
Ships reflected sail upside-down, crews waving politely as they row through the air, oars dripping starlight.
The fleet’s own reflections stare back—older, wiser, sadder.
Some missing limbs they still have.
Some already dead, smiling like they know the punchline to a joke the living haven’t heard yet.
Cassius stands at the prow of the flagship, hands glowing soft amber, eyes spinning like cartwheels.
He conducts the sea like a mad orchestra leader on the best trip of his life.
He hums a low, bison-deep note—and the mirror answers.
The water begins to sing—not sound, but pressure.
A subsonic thrum that makes teeth ache and old regrets surface like bubbles popping with tiny, apologetic sighs.
Above, Jarre-Pierre’s diamond shield blooms—massive, faceted, catching the Solaris light and fracturing it into a disco aurora that dances across the sky like it’s the 70s and forgiveness just dropped the beat.
Together, shield and mirror form a perfect prism—trapping Ashera between her own monument and the impossible sea below.
She stares into it.
Sees the unforgiven, unnecessary version of herself—but worse.
She sees the archive glitching:
Victims in the loops laughing at their own pain.
Screams turning into sea shanties.
Children who died in wars now playing hopscotch on the decks of sunken ships, chalk lines drawn in blood that washes clean with every jump.
Her own glass face reflected back—cracked with a smile she buried centuries ago.
The reflection winks.
Ashera’s voice cracks—existential despair finally meeting its match in absurdity:
“Non… c’est impossible…
L’enfer n’est pas censé… rire.”
(“Hell isn’t supposed to… laugh.”)
She cannot bear it.
Turns the vinyl-glass shield downward—now fully focused on destroying her own reflection.
The mirror holds.
The sea giggles in fractal waves.
The reflection sticks out its tongue.
The reflection loop on Arkion breaks.
Forced Arsenal shuts down.
Weapons vanish mid-phase—swords, spears, crimson feathers dissolving into harmless neon dust.
The tolls soften.
No longer wrath.
Clear resonance—a bell remembering it was made for weddings, not wars.
A thin red sprite condenses from his chest—steady, precise—a scalpel of light reaching toward Ashera’s core.
Only the surge.
Only the bell.
TOLL.
Is this necessary?
Each gentle toll pulls a memory-loop from her.
Routes it through him—he feels it raw, forgives it raw, releases it for forgetting.
Forks it upward—red lightning branching into the clouds like veins of dawn.
Memory exits as intense red burst, lighting the cloud layer from below like internal sunrise.
Then softens to warm white—dissolves into fleeting stars that drift away like fireflies leaving a dark garden.
The sky brightens progressively—clouds glowing crimson-gold from underneath, as if the sun is rising inside the world.
Ashera screams in grief with every deletion—voice cracking with French existential despair:
“Non! Vous effacez l’être!
You are erasing being itself!”
Loop after loop—wars, betrayals, children asking why—pulled, forgiven, released.
He clears ~80%.
Her form is mostly clear glass now—beautiful, translucent, the remaining loops faint and flickering like dying embers.
She is almost free.
Almost.
The fleet watches in stunned silence—tears on cheeks, fists unclenching, old wounds suddenly lighter.
The glass bitch stands thirty stories tall,
shield lowered,
face cracked with something that might be wonder.
The surgery holds.
The dance is loading.
But the last 20% clings.
The deepest loops—the ones she carried alone for three hundred thousand years.
The bell tolls once more—gentle, patient,
asking.
21.4 – Mirrors Clash
The Solaris sea-mirror holds—liquid reality giggling in fractal waves, showing her every version of herself she refused to forgive.
Cassius, still humming low and bison-deep, adds one final flourish.
The mirror shifts.
Shows Ashera as a child.
Small.
Curious.
Reaching for the sky before she ever learned to fall.
She stares.
The child in the mirror smiles—soft, forgiving, unafraid.
Ashera screams.
Not rage.
Grief finally breaking loose—three hundred thousand years of it, cracking open like ice in spring.
She smashes her shield downward into the Solaris sea—like a hammer against her own heart.
Both shatter simultaneously.
Vinu’s voice prays over the Clarity channel:
“Through shame and guilt; grief, fear and desire, you managed to raise her to anger. Just one more…”
Sea-mirror explodes in prismatic fountain—Solaris water raining upward in slow-motion spirals, turning to harmless mist that smells like pine resin and second chances.
Vinyl-glass shield becomes black snow and shards—falling silent, weightless.
Feedback gone.
No more mirrors.
Ashera—unshielded monument of cracked glass, clinging to the last 20%—
looks up at the Canary with new, raw desperation.
The red eye hangs steady,
bell tolling gentle,
asking one last time:
Is this necessary?
The fleet holds its breath.
The toad croaks approval from somewhere distant.
21.5 – Ashera’s Counter-Surgery
Unshielded, thirty stories of cracked glass, Ashera feels the last deletions like teeth pulled from her soul.
The surgeon’s bell tolls on—gentle, relentless.
She turns.
Looks up at the crimson eye in the sky.
Still asking.
Still forgiving.
Enough.
She strikes—Blindside flashing violet, a single precise bolt of plasma lancing upward into Arkion’s chest.
Not to kill.
To interrupt.
The sprite flickers.
The toll stutters.
Arkion’s body locks—bell tolling louder, fractured.
She sees it.
The zerk responds—not with defence, but with hunger.
It drinks the bolt.
Grows a fraction.
She understands in a heartbeat.
The obstacle is the way.
This suit—this man—is built to transmute suffering into force.
Feed it the right pain, the deepest, and it will become the perfect vessel: immortal, unstoppable, an archive that hunts forever.
She injects the final 20%—not as flood, but as needles.
Quiet. Heavy.
The private frequencies—shame that calibrates at the bottom of the scale, guilt that sits like stone in the gut, grief that has forgotten how to end, fear that whispers “if you let this go, you disappear.”
The ones no one else saw.
The ones she carried alone for three hundred thousand years.
Shame for every world she ended.
Guilt for every child who asked why.
Grief for the song she lost.
Fear that joy is just another lie.
Precise bolts—slow, corrosive—sinking into his core.
The surge takes him like a cathedral catching fire from the inside.
His body stays human at the centre—small, almost fragile—
but the zerk unfurls around him in perfect, terrible symmetry.
A crown of violet glass rings blossoms above his head,
each ring a frozen slice of a dying world turning slowly,
projecting silent holograms of archived endings into the void.
One ring shows a city burning forever.
Another holds a child’s last question looping on silent lips.
They multiply as the surge feeds, calm and orderly,
like a librarian shelving new arrivals.
The amber bell at his chest cracks open into a vertical mouth—
not teeth, but tolling blades of red marble that ring out a low, subsonic grief.
Every toll drinks light, drinks hope, converts it into another ring for the crown.
Arms multiply—not wild, but deliberate.
Long, segmented tendrils of black glass and red filament reach outward, each ending in a collector-hand shaped like an open book made of blades.
They do not crush.
They record.
They drift toward planets with the patience of someone who has all the time in the universe, cup a continent gently, and the surface below freezes into a perfect diorama of its final despair—then shrinks, slots neatly into the crown as another turning ring.
Vast wings unfold behind him—silent, layered transparent screens showing endless loops of suffering.
From afar they look like stained-glass cathedral windows depicting every war, every betrayal, every private heartbreak.
Up close you see individual faces frozen mid-scream, eyes still searching for an answer that never came.
He leaves a wake of violet dust drifting behind him—the same purple sand that filled Martin’s lungs—a comet tail of forgotten grief.
The overall shape is angelic, symmetrical, heartbreakingly beautiful—a serene cosmic librarian floating through the dark with a slowly rotating crown of dying worlds, wings of archived pain, and collector-arms reaching out like someone who will never stop shelving books.
It drifts toward the next world, patient as extinction, ready to preserve it forever in perfect, silent agony.
And then—in the space of one heartbeat—Eysin mock-snores over clarity.
He laughs.
Filaments in the sky and his queen-of-the-damned look vanish in a blink.
The whole structure collapses inward like a house of cards made of grief, turning to harmless dust before it can finish forming.
“No! What happened! You are not out of power!”
Arkion laughs again, with utmost relief.
Settles down, looks into the glass lady’s face with a kind smile—because in those visions, Ashera was by his side, like a child looking up to a father.
He becomes still, almost as if his body has died.
He chuckles, and drops the red marble:
“I’d rather die than hunt like that.”
She screams:
“Come back to me!”
She shocks him with another bolt of pain and suffering to try to resurrect whatever glorious visage she had just seen.
He chuckles one last yahu.
No heartbeat.
No toll.
Gone.
She drops him like trash.
Arkion falls—small, dark, tumbling through the violet haze, red marble trailing like the glow of an unfinished cigarette.
From the last naked scrap of lace drifting in the violet haze, a single, cigarette-rough voice croaks:
He chose.
That bell’s done tolling.
Eysin: The Giggling Curtain | Ch. 22 - The Drum, the Dance, the Giggle
The absence of his bells leaves everyone silent, not breathing—maybe even their hearts stopped beating.