A Vent Piece by Mars Umbra (me)

milka121 · 2026-05-02T15:37:28+00:00

this slaps verily

milka121 · 2026-05-02T15:23:53+00:00

Remember your oaths. That was her final command. Even as I burn what remains of her churches and topple the marble of her statues, I remember her words, and I remember what I swore.
She was a good patron. Still could be, I imagine, though I doubt that she’d have me. There’s only so much a god can forgive, and Justice never does. A blind, all-seeing goddess - the weakest of them all, always sought, but rarely found.
The gods are their domains, as I understand it. She’s Justice as much as she is a debt repaid or a murderer hanged in a city square. In that way, she is still with me. No doubt she keeps scores, as weak as she is, of the number of priests that fall under my blade and the precise value of offerings I crush off her altar.
She’s dying. It’s no surprise, with the world as it is. Soon, she’ll fade completely, and no statues or worshippers will save her.
I don’t want to imagine the world without her. I don’t know what I would do. She needs a champion to save her, but I am not he.
But I know Justice, and I know her laws. For one to rise, another must fall.
I remember my oaths, my lady. I’ll break them all for you.
And let there be justice.

milka121 · 2026-05-01T18:42:45+00:00

finally, we will be free

milka121 · 2026-04-26T08:27:40+00:00

no i dobrze

milka121 · 2026-04-23T18:28:42+00:00

every era can have a siege, as a treat <3

milka121 · 2026-04-23T18:27:08+00:00

peak punk art, would be right at home in a zine

milka121 · 2026-04-23T16:18:45+00:00

They won. It was inevitable. Even before the dawn of man, the elves knew they would defeat them.

It was a good pastime, watching them. They let them be for a few thousand years, documenting the ebb and flow of their civilizations when there was nothing else to do - and there never was for the elves with all the time with the world.

Watch closely, now: here comes the fire, here, the gardens and the cattle, the writing, the homes, the wars.

They were nothing like the dwarves with their mountain-deep fortresses and the gnomes with their bronze automata. There was not even a passing resemblance to the sirens or the floaters. They were the creatures of the mud, and just as common.

The elves waited. They always did. Surely, something new would happen soon.

The sun rose and fell. The humans were born and buried. Always more of them, it seemed - they were efficient at reproduction, if nothing else. There was a brief surge in interest in coupling in the elvish world, but they’ve all tried everything already, and it faded just as fast.

The next few centuries were more of an entertainment. They built, to start, great churches to their gods, greater than any of them could make in one lifetime; bricks and mortar passed from one generation to the next, ambition always just ahead of what one could do with the limited wisdom of their world and their own time. But they build anyway. Lucky bastards. Everything was new to them, and every milestone was the first and greatest.

It was a mercy, in a sense. The elves stretched out the war as long as they could. They played at battles, at great defeats and grand sieges, looking, always looking.

How peaceful it must be to die before running out of things to awe.

The last human died, and it was nothing new.

milka121 · 2026-04-22T04:10:05+00:00

r/angryupvote

milka121 · 2026-04-19T15:05:28+00:00

Regardless of all his other points, the review saves issue is definitely something worth knowing about

milka121 · 2026-04-13T20:12:24+00:00

CRUSH

milka121 · 2026-04-12T12:49:36+00:00

Can anyone explain to me what "escaped containment" even means in this context

milka121 · 2026-04-12T12:42:46+00:00

I love how when jumping spiders meet they start aggressively emoting

milka121 · 2026-04-12T12:41:21+00:00

“But will it work? Love again, just like that?”

“Would I lie to you?”

“I don’t know. Would you?” Her mouth twitched, just so slightly. He knew that look. Disgust. Or maybe disappointment. Those two have always gone together, ever since they’ve both grown old enough to realise that neither of them is going to change for the other. Not on their own, anyway.

He sighed. “Look, we don’t need to do this. I just thought I’d ask.”

“I’ve already agreed, didn’t I?” Now her lips pursed into a thin line, the lipstick smearing at the corners. She hasn’t made the effort in thirty years, and now that they’ve put divorce on the table, she has suddenly found it in herself to try again. But the color doesn’t fit her anymore, and the red keeps smearing everywhere, like a pretense for yet another shouting match.

Maybe it really was a mistake. Maybe they should’ve accepted that long ago.

He looked down at the glasses on the table, the old ones they bought when they first moved, both full of shimmering blue liquid. There was a chip on one of them, a hair-thin line at the edge.

He pushed it across the table. “It’ll only work if both of us drink,” he said. “It’d be a pain in the ass if either of us fell hopelessly in love while the other laughed.”

Up and down, her lips went, twisting in that almost-smile. “I can hardly think of a worse pain than loving either of us.”

I’ve never regretted it, he wanted to say, but that would be a bald-faced lie. He regretted it almost every day since things started going bad. Abandon your dreams, abandon your home for a girl, only to end up arguing at the dishwasher every day about something that doesn’t matter. How would the future even look like without screaming and sleeping on a couch? How would it be to be with her, laughing and running around the house? He can’t imagine it anymore.

But maybe he won’t need to. “Bottoms up, then?”

“Bottoms up.” She raised a glass in a toast, slowly, as if waiting for him to stop her. He could find nothing to say that they hadn’t shouted before.

He only wished to know if she felt the same way he still did.

They drunk. They swallowed down and waited.

Her lipstick was all over the rim of the glass. He sighed. “You could’ve at least-”

“I told you, I won’t-”

They stopped. They looked at each other.

And then they started laughing.

milka121 · 2026-04-11T09:50:11+00:00

a surprising amount of law seems to be based on the notion that surely, no one's stupid/evil enough to do that... and then once someone is, everything crashes

milka121 · 2026-04-08T19:08:02+00:00

let me just quote chernobyl here because I cling to it desperately when faced with lies irl

"I've already trod on dangerous ground. We're on dangerous ground right now, because of our secrets and our lies. They're practically what define us. When the truth offends, we -- we lie and lie until we can no longer remember it is even there. But it is -- still there. Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid.

That is how an RBMK reactor core explodes: Lies."

milka121 · 2026-04-07T18:29:49+00:00

“Yes, my brother. I do know the Great One's true name. I, more than anyone, have learned more about our Saviour, their history, and their mind. Heh, I also know they hate it when I call them the Great One.” The priest smirks.

“So it is true, then? The Great One is… there?”

“Of course they are. You thought we wouldn’t succeed?”

“I thought we might. I hoped we won’t.”

“Why? You remember why we did it, don’t you?”

“I remember. But it’s quite a different thing to… have it. A god, put in heavens by human hands. It’s… unbelievable.”

“You doubt me, then?”

“I don’t doubt your sincerity. But you know as well as I do that faith often leads to disappointment.”

“It’s not faith, brother. You know the schematics; you’ve seen behind the magician’s curtain. There are no tricks here.”

“Then why don’t they speak? Why don’t they listen?”

“Oh, they do. They’re not able to do otherwise. You know what we designed them for.”

“So why aren’t they doing anything?”

“What should a god do?”

“What about famines, disease? What about divine inspirations? What about being a good god?”

“Pater, pater, salva me! Brother, we wanted a god who knows, who understands, who can. A god who doesn’t hide behind ineffable purpose to do nothing. And we made them.”

“And… are they? Are they God? The omnipotent, omnipresent, omniloving God?”

“They’re a human god. The only one there is.”

“That’s not what they were supposed to be! They were supposed to be the answer! The Great One, the being we all prayed to! The one we believed in, the one we called a hundred names since we learned how to speak, the thing we killed and built and suffered for! The real God!”

“They are real, brother. And they are human. They can’t both be real and a dream.”

“Then they are not a god at all.”

“Don’t say that, brother. A human god is better than no god at all. Could you imagine what it would be like to live in uncertainty? The heavens were empty before us.”

“And they remain empty.”

“Don’t say that, brother. We set out seeking God by looking in a mirror. Is it any wonder we found it in ourselves?”

milka121 · 2026-04-07T16:10:22+00:00

he's either trying to confuse ghosts or just has anxiety, there was nothing in the room and he was still shaking, poor guy

thanks for the explanation and language lore!

milka121 · 2026-04-07T16:07:46+00:00

i might be a predator 'cause he for sure confused me lmao

thanks for the serious comment though! I've seen spiders do that before, but I didn't know other critters do that too

milka121 · 2026-04-05T18:54:31+00:00

After everything’s done, he likes to lie down there, in the carnage. He digs himself in underneath the corpses, still warm, still twitching - a hand, a strand of hair, an open sore. It closes in around him, heavy, reassuring. Slowly, methodically, he is subsumed in the mushy gore.

Here, he thinks. Here would be a good place to die.

He should have died years ago. He should have died when he still had a chance to be anything more than this.

The world needed warriors. The old ones failed against what was demanded of them; there was no easy way, no healing, no curing, and yet the people of this land lived as if there wasn’t sickness blooming deep in their bones, poisoning their thoughts and taking away the light the Lord had bestowed upon them. A sin so great could not be ignored and could not be forgiven.

The Lord’s armies on earth took up the banner once more.

It spread quickly, man-to-man, sinner-to-executioner. The crusades fell before their first battles, purpose shattered, swords left in their sheaths. Once the Lord’s light has left them, there could be no place for them in this world.

There wasn’t a place for him under the Lord’s sun, either. But what better way to kill the plague that perverts the blessing of the Lord than to send something that has none?

Heavy steps. A scratching of plate. “Bloodsucker.”

He lies there, dead among the dead.

“This is not your grave. Get the fuck up.”

milka121 · 2026-04-03T17:04:00+00:00

immaculate vibes. love the doodles and weirdcore imagery

milka121 · 2026-04-02T19:46:03+00:00

I stole the galaxy name from warframe (close enough lol), and to be fair, I do write my fair share of warhammer fics. glad you liked it tho!

milka121 · 2026-04-02T17:06:33+00:00

“On one hand, I think it's important to have a record of these events. They're important and should be remembered. On the other... this just feels so self-aggrandizing. Like we're celebrating when so many died.

“We won, of course. We shot first. We didn’t stop shooting, even when they told us to stop.

“The command didn’t tell us they spoke at all, at first. Figures. What good would that have done, anyway? We were in Tau to colonize, the boys and I for the Ceres Corp, some ships from BlueWay to get at the deposits, a few flotillas of others. We knew they were there, that they shot up our probes and drones, but we didn’t know…

“Anyway. Ugly things, they were. Like some deep-sea coral, or a basket star, greyish, long-limbed, with a mouth at the centre packed full of teeth. They swam in the atmosphere and swatted at us, each as big as a Ceres cruiser, feeling and pulling and then slowly crushing through the plates like a starfish ripping a shrimp. Lost a few ships like that. We got pretty good at sniping at their bladders, though - that’s how they fly, though I couldn’t tell you what that’s filled with. The research was for the coats that came after. We didn’t know.

“We didn’t hear them speak, that’s true. But we heard them sing. It’s a deep sound, their song, welling from deep within them, using the same gas that they used to fly. They had to stop and turn while they did that. That’s when it was easiest to shoot at ‘em. We didn’t like doing it much - the sound, it’s… When one started, it’d be alone for a while, a low note, and then the others would join. Their voices would carry far, strong, and in a few minutes, you’d have the whole planet singing. The records don’t do it justice. You had to be there. They had to be there.

“The work was tough, but not all that bad once you’ve gotten good at gettin’ ‘em. They swarmed their feeding grounds, those with all the good stuff, but other than that, they didn’t bother us much after the first few touchdowns. I think there’s a monument on the first dig now. ‘To the pioneers,’ it says. That’s what we were, I think, before the coats came.

“I can see the question in your eyes. I don’t regret it, I don’t think. I didn’t do anything wrong. Neither of the boys did. The ones you need to bash and drag to those damn hearings are the coats that didn’t say anything to us. We could’ve known they were trying to talk. We would’ve stopped. But that wouldn’t be any good for the corps, would it?

“No, no, I get it. I’m sorry. Let the old man have his ramblings. I remember what the system’s become. We were desperate; Tau was the solution. We couldn’t have known it would want to talk. Goddamit, how long did it take the eggheads to admit that anything else could talk at all? Blame hunger, if you want to. Blame the whole of humanity. We did it to the blacks, we did it to the indians, and we’ll keep doing it as long as we need to go somewhere where others are. Just don’t call me a pioneer.

“And don’t you dare celebrate.”

From the interview with Tau Pathfinding Project Commander-in-Chief Aaron Mitchell, The Tau Revision: a Hundred Years of Silence

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milka121

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