CANOPIC LOOM

“Here lies Hila, daughter of Hahr. Her father’s strength is HER strength. She will never be consumed”

—Ruined cartouche found amongst the blackened remains of the city of Ul

A funeral engine the size of a pair of cupped palms. The shell is a fibrous and iridescent carapace that reheals when split open. A placid face adorns its roof.

For the burial of stillborn princes.

Interred in the Loom, they are laid to rest in a stone vault the size of a grown man and brimmed with organic slurry. Over time, the Loom renders the liquified meat. It knits skin, stitches bone for the never-was king. Pristine muscle ripples under dead flesh. Regal hair sprouts roughly from a clammy scalp. Within the span of a single moon, a fully formed corpse lies in the grave, wearing a tranquil death mask and wielding a midnight black repeater & delicate blade of chitinous lustre.

CHILDREN OF THE SUN

It is wise, in the land of Lux, to fear the deaths of kings. The highest crime they can convict is to allow harm to befall anyone born of royal blood. The only punishment exceeds death. Staked out in the desert, you grow delirious as you are force fed gallons of volatile wyrmmilk. Eventually it sweats out of you, catching in the noonday sun and you are slowly consumed by ten thousand little immolations as they creep back down through your pores to burn your bones to ash. This may seem like worshipful authoritarianism but it is quite practical, I assure you. The Luciform Throne descends directly from the mortal line of Malek, the Tyrant Sun.

Not this one. A different one.

Upon their deaths, Lucian kings return to the house of their father. Malek is not a benevolent patriarch. His only love is annihilation. The Tyrant Sun eats not to slake his hunger, but because it is strong and others are weak (and he eats his sons to ensure no threat to his eternal rule). There are only two choices: surrender and be consumed now, or fight and be consumed later. There is no escape, no victory. Only a struggle that lasts for as long as it can.

When a noble soul falls to the might of Malek, its mortal remains are consumed in a fiery holocaust. A Solar Lich is born. Such cursed souls are left with nothing of themselves. A sliver of Malek’s hate and power is bound into the bones and they rise again, suffering no living thing to survive.

So. The people of Lux grow their dead kings. They grow them strong and quickly, and they arm them well.

And they bury them far, far away.

This was originally a prompt for my band to start a song from. I think it blossomed from one of the images that Patrick Stuart and Scrap Princess were sending each other to write about a while back. Found it on my drive and thought it was a breath of fresh air to stick into some far-flung corner of my world. I may revisit, I may not.

ART

Loom-Born by Robert Allen Burns

Panel of Solaris, the Tyrant Sun from DC One Million by Grant Morrison and Val Semeiks

WRITTEN TO THE TUNE OF:

Life in Vacuum—5