How Do You Define Victory?

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Michio Tribe
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How Do You Define Victory?

Post by Michio Tribe »

(( A rewrite of this, a passion project. ))

-In this unique cannon, Kham goes by "The Michio" now, or The Great Destroyer, or The Meru Ahk Thal, or Meru to Michio
-The 'Cosmos Destroyer' was War's hammer when War and the other horseys came in the third turn during the fall of Arcturus, Kham took it, and claimed it as his own.
-The Prodigy of Genesis replaces "Gaia" one of the 23 Vescrutians that founded Amonphiiere the supercontinent, during the first turn
-the details surrounding just why Arcturus fell, in my unique headcanon, is forthcoming
-Posting the first chapter here for record-keeping purposes only, respectfully , not open to roleplay or collaboration.

“Defeat is certain?”

The Michio said dryly, almost matter-of-factly, with his head held back and his eyes to the stars- that undulating infinite mass of purples and dark blues speckled with glimmering dashes of white scattered throughout. The words left his lips, flat, heavy, and hung over the crown of his head. Defeat. He had never known it. Ever. And to think, the one time he would surely taste it, foreign to his palliate, would be at the most important juncture in Vescrutian history when the very welfare of all creation was contingent upon simply this. A family reunion.

How he longed to meet other Michio. He dreamed about them, a tribe of people who looked just like him, a beautiful bronze people with crimson eyes like Vescrutia’s blazing core who stood tall and fearless during every Astral Year. The Prodigy of Genesis, who now sat beside him in his existential stupor, who told him stories of the noble Michio culture, spun colorful lectures of their lives as researchers, stewards, anthropologists, emissaries of peace, defenders of creation. She inspired him to be like them. What she didn’t tell him was all of those Michio perished. He unknowingly killed them all upon his birth. The ones that remained were conquerers, zealots, and supremacists; they wanted him to join them or die. The only dialogue to be had between them would be with fists. And they awaited him on Vescrutia’s larger moon.

The Prodigy of Genesis knew these complications weighed heavily upon her champion's most mighty shoulders. And to say she felt guilty was an understatement. Her reasoning for withholding the truth about his lineage, and the circumstances surrounding his birth were noble in nature but she never anticipated Vyrin. Try as she might to find him. She considered he and the Devout extinguished, she dedicated the entire length of the Michio’s life looking for them, hunting them locked away in their hedrons in the most remote parts of Vescrutia. But the ones that eluded her gaze were clearly the most hidden and the most powerful- Vyrin chief among them, The First Breaker and her most hated child.

“Yes, The Devout are extending you a curtsey.”

Replied The Prodigy; she worked her hands through her hair- that dignified vine-like collection of sacred roots looking for the proper braids. She wished The Michio would look at her, she had never seen her champion so empty, seated among an empty, desolated, Arcturus, once a historic site of unification and collaboration in Vyrin’s day, now barren and broken, much like the Michio himself.

“A courtesy…”

She let him ruminate over the implications. The Devout were, as their namesake, strict followers of the Dharma a divine set of rules The Prodigy themselves had made. The law they were invoking In this circumstance was the right of leadership- any Michio was allowed to challenge for leadership of the tribe. The law they most detested was surrendering access to power, they hoarded it among a very small circle, and now they were the mightiest force on the planet; if not the galaxy.

Finally, she found a collection of braids, near the crown of her head, of course, and with a mighty tug, she ripped them from her head. She winced. The Michio’s head snapped toward her in reply, confused. She forced a smirk and beheld the glistening, silver collection of threads lay between her two hands, an offering of protection.

“What are you-“

“Have you ever hit another Michio before?”

They snapped, and he sighed, letting his head fall back once again toward the stars. To the moon, where his elders wait for their prodigal son to return to decide the leadership of the tribe.

“They’re for protection.”

She clarified. The Michio could sense that those three words held thousands of years of historic fact underneath them. He didn’t argue, after all they were all her sons and daughters, made in her image, made to withstand anything.

“Right.”

So The Michio left her to her work. She had the truth of it. Funny how all the truths were coming out now. So certain, so definitive, so factual, and absolute. He had never hit another Michio before. After all, he figured he was the only one, until now.

The Michio’s durability was legend. They sang songs about it in the drinking halls, about how he stood against the blades of The Vindicators, how the Ravagers could slice through anything but him. And his strength? His might? Prodigious. Like out of some story book. Inconceivable, even by Vescrutian standards. He righted the moon when it fell. He repelled the Atlantean tide. He stood between Wars hammer. Took it, and claimed it as his own. But none of that mattered now. Vyrin had his own share of conquests equal in history making measure to The Michio.

“Proceed.”

And so she did. She lifted his forearm, the left first. Which single handedly brought low so many, and delicately began tying her braids around it like a glove. She wove each braid in between the fingers and tied it tightly around the palm. Next came the other arm, less used than the left but was often used to gesture to crowds, address followers and extend fellowship or condemnation to those who deserved it. Next came the legs, that could cover the span of Vescrutia in moments and jettison any obstacle into the farthest reaches of deep space, now wrapped tight in a weave most sacred.

Minutes passed in silence, neither of them said a word. The sky whales cooed overhead, collecting scores of insects in their gaping maws. It would be a lovely sight, for anyone to sit in the ancient halls of Old Arcturus surrounded in this most holy city of consecrated obsidian in the ruins of the Great 13- the first protectors of Vescrutia where The Great 13 stood against the ravagers, repelled Ruin and his hordes of ravagers in nothing but love in adoration for each other and The Mother. But now? It was a vestige of what it once was. And The Michio? The center of it all, like Arcturus, reckoning with his past, deciding his future.

She, finally resolved to say one thing. To speak upon the germinating infant in her womb. The inheritor this world, on the precipice of great change once again.

“I have a name.”

“For the boy?”

“Yes… Xvii”

“Hm… it means Redeemer?“

His grasp of the Michio language was shallow. The Prodigy was the one who spoke the words that unlocked the hedrons which contained wisdom from Turns past, words that set into motion an arms race that left him without kin and country. A time he would love to forever forget but was doomed to remember.

“Redeemed.”

She corrected. With pride. The implications seemed to resonate with The Michio, deeper than the current circumstances hanging over his head. It was unmistakable, she had ignited a fire in him to remind him of who he is- while defeat was justifiably certain, he was a constant variable of possibility against the most impossible odds. He stood from that self-styled throne of translucent obsidian where he inspired and motivated masses to be their best selves for others and no longer let his head fixate on the doom awaiting in the sky but focus his gaze forward to an impossible path that had to be forged with his fists.

The Michio looked to his left and his right; the Braids of the Prodigy drunk the twilight and reflected a spectrum of dazzling color about his feet, almost encircling him in a technicolor aura. He pounded his fists together, and they resounded with a glass-like clang that was satisfying to the ears. He suffocated the thought, that he was protected in the half-truths and lies of his most ancient ancestor- no, he was shrouded in the possibility that his race could be redeemed. If not by him, then by his son.


“He’s almost a head taller than you, he has range and reach on his side.”

They chimed in as he relaxed into a stance. Bringing his fists to his face only affording him the narrowest vision. He had learned early on to predict the movements of his foes by hearing the vibrations in Vescrutia and the air. Michio skin, their kah was hard, true, harder than anything on the planet, but their hairs were sensitive to the slightest shift in the air. Surely Vyrin would have the same advantage.

He envisioned his opponent the same way he greeted him in that mindscape all Michio shared. Tall, foreboding, massive, looking monstrous, and prehistoric. With claws instead of fingernails and toenails. With scar-covered Kah and an overly contemplative face of near-permanent scorn. He envisioned crushing it to smithereens.

But he’d have to get there, so he took a running start and leaped into the air, throwing a flurry of jabs, he counted a few hundred in the seconds he allowed- more than he afforded any foe, and swung his leg around for once final kick that would remove the head from any pair of shoulders.

The endless plains of grass bowed in reverence, and the farthest reaches of Vescrutia echoed every blow. The sky whales scattered from their nightly graze. The clouds split open.

“You’ll be vulnerable in the air.”

They resonated in his mind. He nearly winced, having cast her out previously, once branding her a liar, but he suffocated the thought. He flung his arms upward, generating enough of a wind gust to bring him slamming to the ground in a low crouch. He rode the momentum and swept his left leg around in a semicircle. Subtly apologizing to the blades of grass for being a mere bystander as his sweeping kick flattened acres into one even plane, imagining he was taking the First Breaker off his feet by absolutely shattering his ankles from their legs.

“Finish it.”

He rose into a squat and leaped once again, feeling the spirit of his namesake return to him. That limitless potential. That constant pressure to overwhelm and overcome. And he took a breath, feeling his heart pulse with that of Vescrutia. He was a pillar, after all, an anointed agent of change; this was the path he walked. He wouldn’t forsake it now.

He had called himself The Michio; that’s what others called him. But he had a name when he was born. He hated it. He divorced it after The Prodigy shared what it meant, what it implied he did. But if he could slay many Michio before, he could slay another. He was Meru Ahk’ Thal- The Great Destroyer.

The Michio gleamed airborne in the moonlight, The Prodigy wore hope across her face; certainty was becoming less and less certain with every passing moment as The Michio rose his elbow, imagining he was bringing it scything down upon Vyrins clavicle. But something in him stopped. He paused in the air, almost as if a string had been plucked. Sweat glistened off his chiseled body, knowing work and challenge for the first time in Mother knows how long. He lingered for a moment. And The Prodigy knew that he was reacquainted with the circumstances. The implication of the final blow. The boy she carried in her belly that she generated with The Michio’s DNA was to redeem the Michio legacy, where he, the father, would erase it. But there, hanging in the air, The Prodigy knew he refused to end it this way.

“I won’t kill him-”

“YOU HAVE TO!”

The Prodigy exclaimed, and The Micho turned to face her. Shocked. There was worry upon her face for the first time, where there had been nothing but certainty in all the years he had known her, the hundreds of years. He floated to the ground, the hair-wrapped feet clanging upon the flattened grass with a gentle, delicate chime.

“And erase thousands of years of history? And murder the rest of the tribe?! You said yourself he has followers! All as strong as he!”

“HE-CAN-NOT-BE-CONVINCED! THEY’RE ALL TOO FAR GONE!”

“You taught me all creation can be redeemed.”

“Everyone but them…”

“No-“

“Trust me.”

“NO!”

He almost shook his head. But instead, he curled his lips into a thin line. Not those words. No.

“If I kill him… no, I won’t.”

He wouldn't consider the thought. He strangled it in his mind. She echoed his resolve with a cold hardened stare. Sounding every bit like a mother, like she used to, less a peer, a friend, a guide like she was trying to be.

“After he kills you. He will come for your son. Your daughter, you can live with that?”

“History will redeem me.”

Those legendary, almost holy words. That emboldened The Michio and his followers to do what was necessary, with the ends justifying the means. How ironic, they were spoken here, in Arcturus, during that fated tribunal, when those he called brothers conspired against him and tried to strip him of his power.

The Prodigy was disgusted. You could tell they were spitting with their gaze. Try as he might to stand firm in the presence of a most condescending scowl, his poise showed the smallest crack of all the pain that would come from a life-ending defeat. He could see it play before his eyes. All the atrocities this man and his Devout would commit. But history would redeem him. If this boy was anything like him, Xvii would redeem him.

“So be it.”

Eight shooting stars rocketed overhead, The Prodigy didn’t bear to look, she knew what was coming. The Michio couldn’t help but witness the spectacle of it all. This was Michio magic as he understood it, to his highest standard of perfection, all derivatives of what The Prodigy could do in her youth, spread equally, as she tried among her children. The stars positioned themselves around him, crystalizing into hedron-like translucent glistening shapes bearing foreign inscriptions of a written language he had a rudimentary understanding of. As he read the Michio written language, each of these hedrons was inscribed with a single word. Composed together, The Michio could bend Vescrutia’s already unnatural laws to do whatever they wished in a most arcane cadence. Such ability, as The Prodigy explained, was reserved for the Michio’s second-class citizens - the Mancers, their scientists, builders, architects, and alchemists. The crystals needed to be intricately carved to execute the unique frequency of manipulation, every vector chiseled just right; one flaw would cause unforeseen damage it’s why Mancers were so few, crystallomancy was a difficult, dangerous craft. The Great Destroyer dabbled in it among these very obsidian ruins when he founded COER, thankfully, he had expert help.

From his right to his left, the crystals read: “Go.” “Instantly.” “There.” “Whole” “Completely.” “Simultaneously.” The last two, as The Great Destroyer understood it, were the anchor crystals, the destinations; one read “Mother” the other read…

“Teesaree Aankh?”

He questioned aloud to the only one who could answer.

“Their moon base. The last place I thought to look.”

The others hidden on Vescrutia were a distraction. The Prodigy knew that now. She couldn’t help but wonder if they were willing sacrifices to mislead her, or did Vyrin plan his evacuation of The Great Destroyer’s awakening so meticulously as to surround himself with his most devout, most elite followers?

The Michio smirked, was he admiring Vyrins tact? Was he drinking in the possibility of as Vyrin called it freedom? Unchecked Michio power?

“Defeat is certain?”

He asked one final time in that signature light-hearted gaze that set so many at ease when facing certain doom. They wouldn’t be swayed so easily.

“What do you consider victory?”

They returned the question and turned to walk away, hating, dreading that after all this time, they could only rely upon themselves. The Prodigy hated their gift of immortality, of creation, of making. They hated The Mother, Vescrutia, for making this beautifully diverse simulation of collaboration; they hated they swore to a principle of perpetual imperfection, a fools errand. They hated how their siblings chose reincarnation, or exile from this place. They hated it all.

They needed to prepare for the worst. And that would mean preparing for battle. The boy needed more time, time they didn’t have. And after this battle? Vyrin would descend upon her personally. No. He would be too weak. He would send a more efficient assailant, an assassin. Michio Gideon. And the very thought of The Second Breaker terrified her. Where Vyrin was idealistic, tactical, and callous, Gideon was simply a murderer, created during a time where murder was the only answer.

With a swell of white energy and a flash of light, The Great Destroyer vanished, to go instantly there, whole, completely, simultaneously from Vescrutia, to the moon to create a future where defeat, In the eyes of The Prodigy was absolutely certain.
This is a pen-name account which writes from the narrative perspective of:
Michio Kham, T'ajsa Michio, Gaia- The Divine Anima, The Devout (and its members)
Michio Tribe Lore

Everything posted by this account is official property of ©Vescrutia2018, no reproduction, or reposting of this content identical to or closely resembling is allowed.

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