Vaidona syd Larquinian
The Larquinian Chant
An excerpt from the original Lilienne Mantra, Canto 7-10.

Translated by the Doubling Kin of primeval House Elidann lach Lilienne:
Larq a'Guairen do Ahvriny, Broken Lineage
al'Laine Aranielle id Larq, Broken Lineage

...Regard instead
The setting sun
Whose labored breath
Has just begun

That triumph will come
With the break of day
When the stars tire
And Helios stay...

It was a lurking enemy from behind the pillars of his mind; a simple blur that ran across the haze of his consciousness; an enemy whose hands tilted with the weight of the knife. And this silent assassin, garbed in dismal black and dreary as the crescent of its cheek bore little light, snarled with gleaming teeth. Teeth the color of the white blanket that encases the being as it slips into the world of the sleeping god; the god whose powers were beyond the Lotus; the god of the world beyond listless slumber; the god whose sturdy, unshakable waist had about it an unsheathed blade that brought the silent whimper of death. His kingdom was beyond the light and his world the gloom beyond the brilliance we see. A world of echoing shrieks, a reality of cries that blind the silent prophet, wails that create phantoms to haunt about the offing, moans that ululate like the sounds that escape the mourning of the animated.

And the assassin, its hushed pace a dream against the marble, struck with its knife…the Blade of an Eternal Morpheus…the Instrument of Neptune…the Hilt of the Seer…

The stink of death, followed by the aura whose scented wafts curled like smoke about John's body, stretched its scorched fingers and touched his shoulder that long before, had been slumped at the weight of an invisible grievance. And he merely brushed it away like vapor against his hand, never to leave yet moved by the motion of his fingers, of the anger that bared their phlegmatic fangs to chase despair away. But they were always there. The circling vultures that awaited for the last breath of life to escape his lips for in return, his existence would breathe life into them once it ended. The birth of the universe at the death of a star.

Nature had been cruel to all animals and most cruel to man, only because it knew the guile of its ways.

John Crichton, that pitiful heap of pathetic sadness, pursued his distant enemy, only to find that it had eluded him like a cure to an irreparable pestilence. For how, when his heart had been blown away by a maelstrom of a scalded desert, could he bear to continue when corruption had eaten at his soul like maggots at the decaying corpse and the torch of hope that had kept him alive had been drenched by the water of a cesspool?

Hope…that's what keeps me going…

Words that meant nothing now that the fountain had gone dry.

And the scent of doom was sweet on his lips: grapes that filled his goblet with flowing wine, wheat that became bread to feed his sorrow. He had yearned for the aroma of it, the poison that would someday fill him and titillate his sense of self-preservation into yielding to its adversary.

But she would never approve…she would call him a coward…a man who escaped his fate when he should have faced it; deviant from the noble way when the gladiator stands in the middle of the arena, relishing the sight of the lion, yet facing it with a sword in his hand, with a shield upon his arm.

…A shield…a shield to ward off the lashings of Death's sickle.

Every time he faced Death's hollow sockets, every time he comprehended the drawl of nails scratching against the walls of a dungeon in pursuit of unattainable freedom as he walked with the sound of swollen chains, John had forced the lamp of one woman to illumination with the power of a wick that flickered into existence at the plea of her name. His aegis had dented at the accuracy of the scythe and he sported his love's fervor with the bruises that adorned his dignity.

"Oh God, oh Aeryn…"

The moan was a prayer. It was an untouched dulcimer that, once played, would serve as a host of instruments for his pain. It was a fruit he had taken to his pocket, never to be touched unless hunger had all but made his thirst blind. It was a stream whose tides sprung from the Nile and fed fertility to the banks with the savagery of a frantic mother.

The tears never failed to come and indeed, as the universe feeds its stars with immeasurable heat, an endless deluge of a salt-stained river sustained his tears. And the wheel that worked its infinite course all but gave him enough grief to last a decade.

So alone…Oh God, Oh Aeryn…I'm sorry…

And the ritual continued unhindered as John's soul was wracked with the tears of a god who had known his mortal love would last but half the hourglass' worth: a guilt that could never be washed from his hands.

"John."

The voice served as the soft sheets of one's tired body though it was not the brilliant ballad Aeryn's had been. "What is it Zhaan?"

"I cannot begin to say how sorry I am for your loss…for our loss. You do not mourn alone, John."

"I know, Zhaan. I know." A sad smile, an echo of days that had once been, crossed Crichton's lips and melancholy stole the breath from his mouth in a sad whisper that sounded like the rustle of the trees at the dawn of a cold twilight.

Zhaan, her skin the color of the sky of John's earth, coruscated the fine hues of a spring morn as she stepped from behind him and, without assent, sat beside him to put her head upon his shoulder. He, in answer, leaned sideways. Their foreheads touched and the friendship that they had shared like an oasis in the middle of the desert, became an unbearable knot whose secret to being unbound was left alone like the sands that merely flew against the winds' hasty feet.

"Blue…you have no idea how much I miss her…" he told her in a voice that trembled and cracked, a mere shanty of wooden planks that wavered against the wind of a rising hurricane. "I never knew that it would come to this." Tears began to sting his eyes once more and he hastily wiped the first tear that cascaded from the curve of his cheek. "Frell the universe."

Zhaan was silent.

He closed his eyes and at once, the sensation of his friend's tears was a like a cool stream that ran off the side of his shoulder. She sobbed and with the choke of the newborn, she shook as the little creatures of the dawn shakes when frigid Night casts its cloak about the land.

"Oh John. It could not have ended like this. She could have been so much more…"

In a show of strength that he did not have, he gently took Zhaan's hand in his and kissed it tenderly, to show her that his presence would be a kindling flame within the confines of the cave they themselves had dug.

"Zhaan…Damn, this is hard," he muttered. "I-I don't know how to say this but…but I feel that what we've done wasn't enough." And he choked over his own words, stifling a moan that threatened to crush him under its harsh, uncompassionate fist.

"Nothing we do is enough, John," Zhaan said.

She tried to restrain the next overpowering surge of sorrow but she was taken away once more by the ruthless tide of a mother's wail. The wail at the loss of her child who had been slaughtered for the very reason of his innocence.

And she cried in an eerie silence. Grief had taken Zhaan with him, had stolen her in flurry of false hopes, had been a thief who had taken every audible hint of vexation so that all else would be manifested in the distress of her eyes and its dull, aggrieved cast that splashed doleful myriad colors about the framework of the leviathan.

Perhaps Moya too was grieving and indeed she may have for a soft breeze carried with it her breathing and against the darkness of her corridors, there was an incessant howl that sang of sorrow from Death's harp and cast a caper of an unleashed ire.

Oh God…Oh Aeryn…

And the hymn was John's last melody…his last note into the chant that was a robin's radiant song, a song that had always been sung by heaven's Muse, the alluring Siren that had been Aeryn Sun.

'Bailar dein Larquis'
'Larquis' Song' -derived from the Lilienne Mantra, Canto 22-24

...Upon this earth
The Foolish hope
Along with chattels
They glaring, cope

Marching 'ere
In grayish light
Carousing there in
Jealous flight...

"Syd aqui falchent, traviae sontrasi qui llevatar id mornea sihal aragon meia salchent vale envaituri cal iumviae."
"And they weep, because their hearts beat the same slow rhythm but the faith found in them is but half the hourglass' worth…"

-The End-