Golden Scapegoat's Mutterings

Golden Scapegoat's Mutterings is a readable series found on Amphoreus.

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Part One

1
Bundle dried fennel branches tightly, then let it fully soak in olive oil — that is how a handy torch is made.
Growth, decay, and sprouting once more... They were once unrelated to the civilized world, yet given a name by the unreasonable, and then burned to ashes again.
Like that stele amid wild brush commemorating divinityTitan.
There must always be a lamb framed for sin in this world, the traveler thought as such:
Fire and light are the embodiment of that sin.

2
A feeble flame. Its light is akin to a young girl's long hair, shimmering with silken splendor, yet destined to be devoured by the endless darknessTime.
People always say that light and dark are opposite elements — as if they were twin sisters.
But their natures can't be more different: Darkness is infinite time and space, clumsy and dull. Light is ephemeral life, fleeting in its brilliance.
Nameless dark clouds forever linger at the corners of the ranch. The smart lamb will persuade itself:
"I know nothing of the butcher's knife, after all."

3
The sky has crossed the great sea, the storm stirring crashing waves against the coast.
Broken ivory rocks are strewn over the black reef, like lichen grown out of salt: Those are vestiges of dismembered tides.
The travelersinner rides the waves with their lamb in tow. Those waves are more alabaster and more fledgling than wool...
and also even closer to voiceless eternity.

4
One can imagine a bird's warble by picking up a feather. Therefore a feather is a singing bird.
One can imagine a dolium's figure by picking up a ceramic shard. Therefore, a ceramic shard is a dolium, and can similarly be filled with nectar.
One can imagine a traveler's home by seeing them. Therefore, a traveler is their home, where one can touch the rainbow speaking at the ranch.
Gods wish to see the world: Thus came DarknessLight.

Part Two

5
The dead live on, his bones burning.
The black tide, declaring war on the white rooftop. His home is like a decaying fig, its intact skin hiding festering pustules beneath.
The visage lost, the blood lost, the soul lost... All becomes a haze of chaos because of the regression of light. What is finally lost is the name.
All has ground to a halt, and all has to stop.
The culpritscapegoat must die, even if the sin was yet to be committedirredeemable.

6
The hometown's boat drifts on the water surface — this wailing wood is blistering with green foam.
One who has never ventured far, leaving a place marked as his grave from birth, wandering across the sickly world.
His words verge on madness, his howls like a wind-weathered statue — mute and unspoken.
People are the foam of the landBlood is the foam of light.

7
The ebony tide, leaving nameless water on the rocks. Absolute water of reality, the water of death — thus, bearing no name.
Those who don't drink this water will die of thirst in it. Those who do will lose their own names.
In this water that does not reflect one's face, all the world's faces are contained within.
That face says, humans will re-discover their truer namesgravestones names.

Part Three

5B
Hate and the void devoured the sinnerlamb. He was buried in the four corners of the world.
Gigantic rock mountains lost their weight, and became dark clouds in the sky.
The world is already upside down: Future is past, letters become curses, bricks that absorbed water reborn into soft earth.
The bird knows not what it sings, its only understanding in its own throat.
In this silent world of creation, all life is revived.

6B
Before it matured, the lamb could talk to the dead.
Not music, not letters — black iron and charcoal were used to perform the seance.
The branding iron glowed red-hot in the furnace, its fuel being the past of the deadancestors. On the lamb's flawless skin, it wanted to leave a mark that denoted the shepherd's propertydestiny.
The scar was its shadow cast upon time. From then on, the lamb could no longer commune with the dead.

7B
Cutting open the myrrh tree's bark, people harvest its valuable spices to embalm the bodies of the deceased.
Monoliths melted, sulfur rising, the earth has also been roasted into asphalt — those who wish to destroy all harvest heavenly fire from graves.
The eternal tree rages with fire, its wooden shards shattered into stars. Life is resurrected, perishes, and then returns once again in this primordial blaze.
The sky is a slab of lapis lazuli — before it was solidified, the lands once hurled it high into the air.

Part Four

8
The two gods brush past each other by the shoulder along the bridge — he imagines such a scene.
One is the blinding light that rises from infinite void, and the other is blackened blood coursing along parched earth.
One dons a flaming crown while prostrating, and the other weeping tears of sulfur amidst hymns.
"This happened a thousand years ago" — the elder he imagines says to the children.
Words became flesh.

9
The sinnertraveler swallows the faint light behind bars, the prison so dark he can't see past his own hand.
He doesn't remember who locked him up here. A trail of black ants crawls past his black garb in darkness.
The lamb's skull murmurs to itself: If we had fangs and claws, you wouldn't be locked in here now.
"Enough," he musters in a moldered voice from the depths of his corroded throat, "the sky is but an abyss darker than a prison."
"You and I are nothing more than slaves to a distant dream."

10
The sinner was once gardener to an epitaph. The world was still young then, and the final words of the deceased had also just opened their eyes.
"The night uses its tide to cover us, the reciprocal light being its rhythm."
"Sunlight wavers between movement and stoppage. That transparent flash was also once someone's life."
The dream is everything that the dream forgot.
People are shadows of people's words.

11
The sinner and the lamb are like two shredded pieces of paper: Torn apart by dreams of day, bound together in blood by dark of night. Destroyed before it all begins, living in shame after it all ends.
Letters have long been etched into eternity — that fate was, is, and will be written by the sinner's own sword, dipped in blood-ink.
The one who carries out the sacrifice is also part of the sacrificial offering.
They all no longer have faces.
They all no longer have names.

Part Five

12
The hour hand greets the minute hand's thirteenth return, just as it did the first time. The sinner cannot tell beginning and end apart.
"Yesterday, I was going to tend to the flock in the sky, blanketed by white clouds, where my lambs would only be revealed when gales billowed."
"Tomorrow, I will have etched fire to the slate, tempered shattered shackles with it, and forged crowns of triumph for heroes."
"And today, I will never lose my own Coreflame."
The dead have not passed, just as the living are yet to be born.

13
The waterfall bleeds the mountains, like a lamb's throat being slit. This world's evils are all the sins the traveler will commithave committed.
Thus, they will begin with the original sinend with the original sin.
"We brought light to the world."
"We brought destruction to the world."
He is alone, yet murmurs to no one.
The sinnertraveler's face is blurred. The travelersinner's figure overlaps.
The sky will beonce was the shadow after the land's death.

14
He once brought light to the world, but now dwells in a paradise no wider than a foot.
An obsidian urn containing ashen remains.
He is the living dead, as well as a dead mortal. He speaks to the sky in the language of stones, and to the land in the language of fire.
He speaks to people in the language of blood.
"And then they slew himAnd then he slew them."

15
"To think, that I can still think."
The sinnertraveler was also surprised by himself. The world's evilsTime have taught him all languages, but he has also lost his own language.
Humans are an anomaly, for only they possess the light, and only they are deemed worthy of being slain. LightStrife is indeed the great evil that he brought unto this world. As punishment, his reason, spark, or whatever this is called... has long been stripped away like a peeled onion, dismembered piece by piece.
It's just...
"To think, that Iyou can still think."

Part Six

16
The avalanche once came.
He is a diligent dinghy, drifting along the frozen waterfall, pursuing that preylamb carved into his soul.
He travels against the light, for he remembers that he hasn't placed the firelight that brightens the world on its zenith. He recites his desires with blood, for the air on that zenith is so thin it suffocates — only the language of blood can leave traces in thoughts.
"I am the shepherd."
The golden fleece in the dream slumbers in the sanguine seabed.

16B
Too many people die too late, yet some die too soon.
The lamb says that death is a major affair as worthy of import as the most grandiose festival. Festivals won't just happen once, but death cannot be rewound.
"But you have already stepped on the altar countless times. I am the assistant priestkiller after all, so I know it well."
"That wasn't me. Seriously, it wasn't."
"Don't pretend to be so relaxed."
"You're right. Sorry."
To deliver the firelight, wesinners killed ourselves every time.

Other Languages

Language	Official Name
English	Golden Scapegoat's Mutterings
Chinese (Simplified)	黄金替罪羊的呓语
Chinese (Traditional)	黃金替罪羔羊的囈語
Japanese	黄金のスケープゴートの譫言
Korean	황금 희생양의 잠꼬대
Spanish	Murmullos del chivo expiatorio dorado
French	Murmures du Bouc émissaire doré
Russian	Нашёптанное золотым руном отпущения
Thai	เสียงกระซิบของ "แพะรับบาปทองคำ"
Vietnamese	Lời Thì Thầm Của Con Dê Gánh Tội Vàng
German	Gemurmel des Goldenen Sündenbocks
Indonesian	Gumaman Kambing Hitam Emas
Portuguese	Sussurros do Bode Expiatório Dourado

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