155
M.A.R.S. Bulletin 155
The Inception of Mohrmak — Retrieved, in part, from an early draft of Nightlighter.
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‘Since the dawn of the Mystonak,’ the Giubah used to say, ‘it is said that the creature called Mohrmak slumbers there, in the Tunnels deep, hidden from sight within the thickest of the darkness. It’s said he was banished there, thrown away and forgotten. For an eternity, a rational creature doomed to live out a damned existence under a city biting at the edge of reason, our city. What a terrible torture it must be!
‘He wakes only to feed, to survive and to maintain and to perpetuate the darkness. But an eternity trapped in forever blackness was not enough. Left only with a weakened intuition, the Kore, our keepers of the universe, cursed it and instructed it to change his mind, his body, mutilate it until it resembled not something of human form, but of beast.’
‘And what happened then?’ young Kohra would ask, looking up at the Giubah’s wrinkled face, the scar etched like stone across her face, the scar that told stories.
‘And the cursed intuition, under the scrutiny of the Kore, began to change him, eat away at his flesh, claw at it and infect it with disease. The cursed intuition poisoned his mind, filled it with miserable thoughts, of death, of dying—morbidity that would shake even the dead in their graves. The intuition taunted him, there were many of them, yes—many voices inside his mind. They instructed him to all but die—kill himself, to self-mutilate, to abandon his humanity and embrace his new beastly lineage.’
‘And did he do it?’ young Kohra would say.
‘What? Kill himself? No, my young one. His mind was not yet taken, not yet condemned. He could fight his death, prolong it, yes, but Mohrmak could not keep the cursed intuition from his mind. It fought him back, clung to his thoughts like a moth to light. Under its command, he clawed at his flesh, ripped through it as though it were warm bread. The cursed intuition told him that he would need to make space for his new body, that this old body was weak and useless and had no place in this world.
‘So Mohrmak tore the human limbs from his body and burned them and consumed the ashes. Around the fire Mohrmak danced wildly on half-legs, catching floating ash with his forked tongue. The gravel and the hot coals crunched under what flesh still clung to where his legs once were, and open wounds were cauterized by the heat from the coals. The pain must’ve been great. But the cursed intuition told him to ignore the pain, that the pain was merely your new body growing, becoming stronger, that doing so would bring him pleasure and provide more space for his new body—his new being—to grow and to form.’
‘And his body? Tell me again what happened to it.’
‘Well, my young one… Poor, poor Mohrmak… It is said that his open wounds soon became infected, yellow and rank with disease. In them he planted eggs—spawn of the cepholophates: one of the few other living creatures that had found a home in the Tunnels. A detestable creature, slimy and squid-like, that he ate, scavenged. The cursed intuition taught him how to hunt them and how to defend himself, how to feed and how to nurture his new body. They taught him how to root the eggs in his open flesh, and how the infection was a natural part of the shedding of his old body.
‘The Tunnels, deep in the caverns beneath our city, grow smaller further down. Space is slim. And cold! Oh so cold! Cold that would freeze a Primaveidhen heatstorm, turn a sane man mad. And the deeper Mohrmak ventured into Tunnels, into the blackness, the deeper he was driven to madness at the will of his cursed intuition. When no longer could he stand, Mohrmak crawled, slithered on his belly like a worm. His cursed intuition planted a second egg—to compensate for his stunted movements—to welcome another part of your new body.
‘Over time his diseased flesh scabbed and the eggs beneath grew, and his body sprouted new appendages. Tentacles—a cruel concoction of darkness, cepholophates, and the instability of a once rational mind—eight of them, two in place of each missing limb, clung to his torso, stitched with newfound flesh. The once-body of a man had stretched, abnormally elongated and was now segmented into two unequal halves connected by disjointed and infected skin.’
‘So he could move around down there, in the Tunnels?’
‘Oh yes. And he became quite good at it too, quite accustomed to his new body. Against his will, Mohrmak was beginning to like his new body. But that will was not his own. No, the cursed intuition was gaining a stronger hold on his mind.
‘It instructed Mohrmak to take the bones that remained and had survived the flame—the same flame around which he used to dance—and grind them into a fine powder. A medicine, the cursed intuition would say, a medicine to protect your new body, expedite its growth. He consumed it, through his nose, his anus, through any orifice that would provide him the most pleasurable sensation; this was the euphoria that made him desire the powder more and more and more.
‘The powder opened his eyes to the nexus of his new body and the opportunities it promised. He could feel the lids of his eyes peel back and expose the balls of his eyes, seven of them. One for each Cycle, the cursed intuition would tell him. The air was unfamiliar to his eyes. It was cold and stung like a thousand hornets, but now Mohrmak could see all around him and all around his new body that had taken shape. He could see that he was a part of the darkness. The cursed intuition told him to like the darkness, welcome it, to love it, to let it violate his deformed body. And Mohrmak did—again and again and again.’
‘But why, Giubah? Why was Mohrmak sent to the Tunnels? What did he do? What could he have done to deserve this? Tell me! Tell me again!’
‘Well, my young one,’ the Giubah would say, ‘the Kore, led astray by emotion—the very thing that comprised them—had learned to dislike Mohrmak, to despise him. They grew jealous of him, of his ability to see logic and reason in all things. A powerful trait: a thing the Kore lacked. Yet Mohrmak was a cornerstone of their shared existence. Without him, they were incomplete. Perhaps then, there was something…else within him. Something waiting to be born.
‘Thus, the Kore had themselves deceived. They believed that Mohrmak had deceived them, that he used his power maliciously, to undermine theirs, to disrupt the balance of the Quasidimension. Their Creation. Their perfect existence.
‘Threatened, the Kore thought Mohrmak would determine them obsolete, and take the Quasidimension for himself. For whom is not compelled by the power of reason? So they banished him, to the EDT—to our dimension, to earth—cursing him with a strangetuition, forever tasked to monitor a more embryonic form of life, an accidental spawn of the Quasidimension: humans.
‘Humans… Us?’
‘“The Great Experiment”, we humans were. Viewed by the Kore as a species that simply needed to be kept under control, lest we infect their utopia. Though primitive and helpless, Mohrmak saw potential in the humans. He saw a species bound by order, compliant. Yet one that was eager to learn. In the humans, he saw his key to retribution.
‘So Mohrmak got to work.
‘He devised a system—the ever-progressing, cyclical phases of the Mystonak—designed to harvest this potential. A system so circular, so governed by the rule of law that the humans would be determined to thrive. Perfection, bliss, was inevitable. Mohrmak was on the path to success.’
‘And did he succeed?’
‘Yes. He did, for a time. His system was flawless, perfect in every way. The Mystonak was his game, and the humans his players. He had fashioned his army. And with them he would lay claim to the Quasidimension. He would achieve the Breach.’
‘But—’
‘But Mohrmak overestimated the humans. He failed to consider that we are a flawed species. One that no system can remedy. And know, my sweet Kohra, that our flaw is one of cruel irony. The desire, the insatiable desire to eliminate our flaw—to become, what we know, but cannot believe, is impossible: the perfect being. To realize perfection and spread it across the whole of existence.
‘And that’s the joke, for that’s why we fail, time and time again. And it’s why Mohrmak failed. He was fated to. With the humans he was dealt a bad hand. If only he could have learned the truth…’
‘What truth, Giubah? Learn what truth?’
‘That is indeed the question, my young and inquisitive Kohra. It is that truth that we seek. The feeling that all of this isn’t quite right, that we are destined for something more. That without Mohrmak, without reason, the Kore is incomplete—the Quasidimension is incomplete. That perhaps Mohrmak was on to something. That perhaps, one of us humans is the key.’