Episode Eight: The Vision
Some fifteen minutes later, when I arrive at my office, I'm basically fine. Some aches and potential bruises along my back and shoulders, but fine. I shut the door easily behind me and make my way over to my desk. I round behind it, finding a Draig. Then I grab a fresh candle and one of the sticks trisecting my desk. Combining these three items in the right order, I end up with a lit candle on a stick and make my way to the back wall of my office.
It's much easier to find the secret panel with a light. Though I would like to say that statement is only true of me, I'm not sure as I slip into the secret space, closing the door. How could Metus know about this basement? It's not like he could just access the public records and find the blueprint. ...Could he? Come to think of it, I'm not sure. I thought I was careful. Alright – so not Genghis Khan careful. I mean, I didn't kill – or have killed – everyone who worked on my office, Including the borderline genius who crafted this secret door for me.
Really – the panel in the way it was engineered, it was perfect. Invisible.
I'd had to build this place basically from scratch. It had all but rotted down around the previous owners. Not unlike most of the buildings on my street. Just because I was in the Jewish colony didn't mean that large parts of it weren't abandoned, still. But that was fine. That meant I could make it my own, in a manner of speaking. There were windows. Four of them: two in the side walls, two in the wall facing the street. But they were covered up with thick black curtains. The walls on the interior are paned with pine from the Fiemme Valley – the same trees that Stradivari would use for his violins, as fate would have it.
I do not stop or even slow to ponder this, instead heading immediately down the spiral stone staircase. There are certain decisions which must be acted out at once; certain irons which, as they say, must be struck while they're hot. I had learned something from my visit to Peitho. It did not take me long, replaying the moment in my memory almost as soon as I was outside the tavern, to figure out exactly what magick she thought I would use. In my case, this was not so much a hot iron-type situation – unless you mean the Trial by Fire where the accused is made to hold an iron while it's red hot to prove his or her innocence; in that case, hell yes it was. It was more like, and specifically that, if I hesitated for even a second I was more than unlikely to follow through. I was destined to.
I emerge into my laboratory. The space is not larger than my office, but, filled with a sea of tables, only the merest of deer paths navigating them, as it is, it feels vast. Perhaps this is what potential feels like. Possibility.
There was so much of it, possibility, piled atop those tables and in the floor beneath them. I am not making a false claim when I say that my laboratory was the most sophisticated in all of Christendom, nay, outside of Baghdad. It was very likely the only one in Christendom. I had glass objects, alembics and the like, which would not make their way to Europe via the Muslim Caliphates for centuries. Projects, finished, unfinished, and unstarted alike, filled the room. I head straight for the table at the back I'd visited earlier this day.
It's easy to demonize drugs – especially the good ones.
Psychedelics and entheogens –hallucinogens –have been with humans since before you were fully modern humans. Potentially for millions of years. I'm not here to tell you about the Stoned Ape Hypothesis; but I am going to tell you that there are good reasons that psychedelics are treated how they are. I should say numerous reasons: few of them are actually good. I feel no pressure, nay, need to articulate an argument in favor of drugs. Drugs, especially the Good Ones, are frightening. Consciousness is frightening.
Built right into the brain are structures for fearing your consciousness. And mine are starting to wake up as I walk. As the reality of what I an coming down here intending to do dawns on my mind.
Fear is an indelible part of the human experience. It was fear that first caused your ancestors to walk upright; it was fear which caused you to harness fire and cover yourselves in the skins of your kills – even one another. And it is fear which causes you both to avoid and to use drugs. There is a way of describing the mind where you say something like the Ego is the president of your consciousness. It is the Hitler sitting at the top of your hierarchical mind – the tip of the exposed part of the iceberg of your consciousness, as Freud and Jung described it— Screaming that there is no one above him and that you should be afraid. Your ego tells you that because of it you have nothing and everything to fear. Because your ego knows that he is a slaver, that if you ever learn his game you will topple him from his tower.
The same way your governments and corporations treat you. The same way the Powers that Be treat them.
If you do not treat drugs – if you do not treat your consciousness – with the fear and respect they deserve, you will get the reward you deserve. One way or another.
I am afraid. I am afraid of Metus and Peitho, yes; afraid for Regina; afraid of where that path is going to lead; but that is not the fear that drives me. I am afraid of the Plant – afraid of what it might show me, but more frightening still is the notion that I will not be able –enough– to control the experience – that I will see nothing; or remember nothing. Or that I will experience nothing.
I find the sack I found myself with this morning. I hold it in my hands for a long moment, touching it so lightly I can almost tell myself I don't feel the cannabis buds against my fingers.
I take a deep breath.
Nothing is still something. Nothing is something without something in it – yet.
If Peitho comes to me tomorrow and I've seen nothing, then I've seen nothing and I really can't help her.
Do you believe that will save you?
I linger on this thought for a long moment. It echoes between my ears. And I don't have an answer for it. I don't even know where to start. It could mean so many things.
Will it save me? Save me from what? I'm already damned.
I open the sack. At some point I'd put the candle down on the table. I stare down at the barely-lit Plant. I can just see its outline in the flickering of the candle.
Is this really what you want to do?
Peitho said it, didn't she?
She said it when we were standing outside.
Right. She said I had it. She could only mean this.
And how does she know you have it?
A question I would have to answer another time.
I set about preparing the Potion.
There is a certain meditative quality to preparations of this sort. Rolling a cigarette for yourself, packing a pipe, baking a pie – there is a level of appreciation, that is valuation, in making something for yourself. Call it focus, call it love, call it what you like, but when done right, the experience is matchless.
To my right, there is the only open space in the room. A cramped little five foot square. Circumscribing this space, drawn in chalk on the floor, is a circle. Magic Circles are a big to-do in esoteric literature. From Marvel sorcerers to demon hunters and exorcists, they're anywhere you'd like to look within the Occult. Mine was not complex. A simple pair of triangles arranged in an equilateral six-pointed star with dots in the spaces between the points, all within the circle. This is known to some as the Seal of Solomon. The triangles represent masculine and feminine energy – pretty much universally. The dots represent the Spirit. No letters, no runes outside. Nothing as complex as that.
I turn and stand over the Circle, candle in one hand, Potion in the other. What I am about to do is insane. Do I even believe in the efficacy of this Circle? Do I believe in magick at all?
The answer is a resounding no, whether I think it or not. I've seen enough to know that there is nothing to see. No magick, no... nothing.
And yet here I am. Holding a potion that's meant to help me commune with gods. Gods I don't believe exist outside of stories – stories which I believe are simple anthropomorphizations of ideas and experiences. Images attempting to capture or at the very best copy some greater truth. Maybe historical events, maybe not. But lessons, teaching tools. Nothing more.
I take another deep breath, steadying myself.
I only drew this Circle in the first place because you're supposed to have some place to meditate while you work alchemy. When you meditate regularly, you're supposed to have a special place to do it. This was mine – for a time. As it turns out, alchemy is boring. Most of your time spent practicing alchemy is actually spent practicing patience. Waiting. Most of what you're doing is waiting. Some will tell you that the meditative process is to purify the Self as well as whatever element you're working on. That's not how I did things. And, believe it or not, you can wait for an alchemical process to happen just as easily from the comfort of your overstuffed chair and a lozenge of opium and a Mwg or five just as well as you can the discomfort of a stone floor and a silly magic circle.
I lower myself to the floor. Placing the candle just outside the perimeter of the Circle, I can't help but notice how faded and scuffed some of the chalk is.
I should really fix this before I do this.
The thought is a little stunning. I stop, looking down at the floor for many seconds.
Why would you do that? You don't even believe the circle is magick.
What if we encounter something? Don't we want to be protected?
Protected?
I shake my head. This is crazy. Nonsense.
With some effort, I get myself seated cross-legged, in the Lotus position. It's been a while since I've done this. Hurts a little to sit all the way upright. Close my eyes. You're not supposed to drink the whole thing in one go. I'm sure it won't be a big deal. Only a fool is sure of anything. Mustering all of my courage, I chug it down. It's awful. Indescribable in taste except to say foul. This is not something you could ever get used to. Gasping and choking a little, I wipe my mouth with my forearm. Why had I done that?
I settle myself a little, gasping a big, deep breath, filling my body with air. When I let it out, slowly, counting my heartbeats to six, I try to let my mind completely empty. I'm counting to six and inhaling. I used to be able to do this when I was a kid. Exhale... five, six. I was even pretty good at it. Inhale. What did I used to do? Laughing exhale.
Do you remember the Mental Library? That library I envisioned storing all the stories the Master told me?
Suddenly I'm standing – stooping, actually, I realize, in a small subterranean space. Small because short, but also, it seems to be dug among the root system of a tree. Roots hang from the ceiling. I can almost remember finding the perfect tree, digging out the inside of the hill by hand over long weeks. I kneel down so I can lift my head and get a view of the place. What I see takes my breath away.
The walls of the cave are decorated with little paintings made by little hands. I remember those little hands. I can almost see them, overlaid atop each image as I move around this place, getting a better look. I remember this place. I remember having those hands, digging out under the tree, painting these stories. As I look at the images, I can all but hear the Master's voice, echoing, telling them. I don't stop to listen.
“Ah. Master Awen.”
My head turns to the sound of this voice at the same time my body tries to shoot upright – like I've been caught somewhere I shouldn't be. When I have got myself together enough to actually see, I'm looking at an apparent hole sloped up to the outside. I don't recognize the voice.
“I did not expect you to come by the, er, rear entrance, Sire.”
“Wh – who are you?” Am I really huddled in a dirt hole in my own imagination, yelling at authority figures outside? This is too transparent even for me.
Sure looks that way.
“Ah. Forgive me. Yes. I was not prepared to properly introduce myself. I forget that we have not met. After all, I have known you my whole existence. I am your Mental Librarian, Master.”
That makes sense. It has been a while since I've been here.
“Things have changed, Sire – developed, since last time. Would you like to come to the new facilities?”
I mean, that is why I came here. I struggle my way to the hole of light. When I stand—
I'm standing in a Classical museum. I recognize it immediately. The marble columns, the ceiling open to a beautiful cloudless blue sky, birds flying overhead. The benches that are never as comfortable as you think you might be able to imagine them. And all along the walls of this place, manuscripts. Scrolls, more often than codices. And all of them filled with the world's knowledge.
“Wonderful is it not?” the Librarian asks me.
“Yeah. I spent a lot of time here when I was a kid.”
“Your teenage years in a nutshell. Yes, Sire.”
I turn to my left to regard the Librarian. He appears in every way, from his feet to the follicles of his hair, to be an exceptionally well dressed and coifed – if nerdy and 10thcentury hipster – copy of me. With one exception: it has no eyes. There aren't even empty sockets; just smooth flesh from his brow to his meticulous beard.
Creepy.
“See no Evil, Sire.”
See no Evil? “What does that mean?”
“That was the credo with which you imagined me, Sire.”
That is hardly an explanation. And yet I understand – because I remember:
“If you see no Evil, you will show me none.” A novel ideal, but – “Wait. What is that? What is it from?”
“From, Sire?” it tilts its head, then smiles at me. “Are you testing me, Sire?”
“What? No. Where did you pull that phrase from?”
“I did not, Master. You did. You pulled it from Kong Zi, Sire. The 'See, hear, speak nothing, blah blah, Evil, basically,' Sire.”
Sounds like something I'd think. “Can you quit it with the Sire stuff? And don't start it with Lord and Master and all that shit, either. And... don't call me Awen.”
“Yes. Understood. It has been a long time.”
Seven years doesn't feel like it's that long.
It's nearly a quarter of your life. Sire. Apparently Reason was feeling threatened by the presence of the Librarian.
I laugh at this a little.
“Come. Your teenage years are charming, but it has been, as you say, seven years. Come see the work that has been done.”
I take a step forward to join him and—
Suddenly I'm in the most magnificent place I have ever imagined.
A veritable tower of marble column soar toward the infinitely distant ceiling. I know that this place has a ceiling because I can see the dome – it's blue, and painted with hazy white clouds; and the sun seems to be setting. The perfect time of day to lounge in an infinity of knowledge. There are too many floors to count, ascending above me. They each open on this central part of the Library, each a little wider than the one above. It is awesome.
I look around me. The tiled floors are decorated in a dizzying array of patterns. Mandalas and murals too beautiful for me to look at for long. Between the infinitely expanding columns, there are an infinite number of bookshelves and racks and tables. Each is piled full with manuscripts – books and scrolls and parchments, every make and model that has ever existed – or with rolled paintings or tapestries. Every means that has ever been devised for expressing the human mind, its knowledge, its fears, its desires, its history – every conceivable kind – surrounds me. And all of it bathed in the most glorious, calming white light.
I love this place.
From first glance, I already know this feels more at home than anywhere I have ever spent any amount of time. Most certainly more than the bed I share with my wife.
“You approve then, s—“
I look to the sound of the Libarian, and laugh out loud when I find him. He is standing behind the most ludicrous desk I've ever thought of. That's not even an accurate way to describe it. He's standing inside the circumference of a desk which is in fact an unbroken circle of some rich, glistening wood. The Help Desk of all Help Desks.
“Just call me Rob,” I say as I make my way to him. “Robert if you need to make it formal. And yes. Yes, I approve. A lot.”
“That pleases me to hear, Rob...ert. Now. As to what you have come for— I have complied a...bibliography for you, regarding your thoughts the last few days. This is everything I could find about everything that pinged in your mind.”
He gestures to a table beside him – which I soon realize isn't a table at all. It's a multi-tiered shelf on wheels, like a little cart. What a genius idea. I'd have to make something like that sometime. And on top of it are piled high a series of books and loose sheets of paper.
“That really is... a lot.”
“It is. I have also taken the liberty of writing a list of suggestions, place where you might start your thinking.”
He hands me a sheet of paper.
“Do any of them have to do with finding Peitho's sister?”
“You tell me, Rob.”
Hm. Sassy.
I look down at the sheet in my hands. It is, as he said, a list. Numbered, even. How thoughtful of him.
#1 – She is Greek
and the myths that come with that
#2 – Very well educated
Family must be rich and/or powerful
#3 – She seems to have thoughts about magick and possibility
Why does she know about the Plant?
#4 – Atoninus Liberalus
Lamia/Sybaris
#5 – Her potential reasons for hiding details from you
#7 – What if her Matere is related to the Lamia Spirit
Ancient serpent cults
I read one in particular aloud:
“#6 – Peitho called him Pepin. The Nine in the vision said Pepin the Great is in Venice.” I look at the Librarian after I finish. “But that—“
“Vision was as real as this place, Robert. As real as I. Don't start with me that visionary states aren't veridical. The Truth is too big. We can't say all of it. Not at once. You saw them, you see me. Will anything you learn in here be true if you don't try it once you're awake?”
“Then I'm dreaming.”
“Not dreaming. Not asleep. Neither are you awakened.”
“Am I there again?“
The Librarian looks at me, tilting his head slightly to the side.
When am I going to start feeling the Potion? I wonder. I thought it might take me to the—
Nothing. Void.
If the Void is a there, that's where I am.
Wadjet? I think, barely more than a whisper into the nothingness. Then, gathering my courage, I call out:I want to talk to you about the Rod of Asclepius!
The words bounce cacophonically off the nothing of this place. Wadjet? Hmm. What do I want know about it? Where it is? Where has it been? Is it even...real?
The serpent appears before me.
Three feet tall, it is this time a thing of shimmering emerald, still and emitting a faint light, like cut stone. It is coiled around something as though climbing – and looking at me with its knowing grin. Its tongue flicks out, irritation, then it is climbing a rod.
An old motif.
The serpent inclines her head.
Then it is real? I ask.
She gives no indication of an answer.
Show me, I plead. What is it? Where is it?
Suddenly the Void is a parchment map of the Mediterranean. There are no names on the landmasses, nothing to indicate nations or tribes or anything to that effect. The Rod and Serpent shrink as though they are falling away from me. It takes a while. A long while. Is this meant to imply a long time ago? Then it stops. Little more than an inch tall, it appears to be standing in the Nile Delta. Lower Egypt. It's there for a long time.
The world is burning. The shadows of Chaos descend across the land. A hand grabs the Rod. Another. There is a struggle. It is brought to northwest Greece. Then there is a... something. I don't understand what I'm feeling. Then the Rod hops in the air and lands on a tiny island in the Aegean. Where again it sits motionless. Meanwhile, the world around it is burning.
I don't know what this means. Is this the past? Show me its recent fate?
As I think this, the map suddenly changes, my view zooming in on the Rod and one island in particular. I do not know it, but it is interesting that it looks kind of like a lowercase N.
Then there is black nothing.
Except it's not nothing. In the stillness, I feel a million different sensations and more. A cool wind, damp, the throat and breath of the earth. I can smell and faintly taste the stone, the salt, the water from the sea – and myself, subtly reptilian. I hear only barely the air rustling through the silent tunnels.
And the black is not total, or, if it is, I am able to sense the tunnel walls around me. I can half-see, half-feel, like faint, invisible lines in the dark, the regular circularity of the walls, the smoothness of the descending floor. Hands worked this natural chamber, perfecting the Great Mother's work. I press my hand gently to the wall, half-feeling, half-sensing in some unnamable way the faint pulse of her heart.
I had halted, fearful that I heard someone coming. I had not. It must have been a feeling. The tinge of guilt? I'm not sure. But I was sure something had changed from a moment ago. They were all asleep. I was alone. And yet I feel watched, as though there is someone with me in this very tunnel. I push the feeling from my mind. Impossible. I would see them – sense them. No matter. In a moment, I will hold salvation in my hands. If my Sisters only knew what the world was like. I will show them. I will go out – and they will remember my deeds. I will return a hero. More than that. A god.
Yet I slow my pace, moving even more carefully.
And then – there it is.
I emerge into a massive natural cavern. The whole place, perhaps thousands of feet across, is domed by a stalactite-toothed ceiling. The tunnel I have emerged from and the floor that emerges to the far wall ahead of me, are only a sliver of this space. To my right, less than two steps from the tunnel, is a cliff that descends into bottomless nothing. I shudder at the thought of what a misstep could mean for me. As though I'm imagining it, I can hear the lapping of waves echo out of the throat of that chasm. Jutting out over that void, from the center of this semi-circular, amphitheater-like space, juts a long tongue of stone. Unsupported, it looms out over the dark.
What I want is at its end.
Nestled in the altar carved out of a stalagmite.
And that's where I head. I'm increasing my pace, now. Excitement overwhelms the dread and fear I feel. Soon I will have it. Soon everything will change forever. The outcropping is not wide. Only barely able to fit me side-to-side. But I am not careful. Soon I have it. I take it up in my arms – my arms are, I notice but do not care or find this interesting, covered in scales. browns on the outside and cream on the inside.
I look down at it for just one marvelous moment. The serpent and its rod. The Rod of Asclepius! The stone and wood have been so perfectly wrought that they seem to be still alive. I'm turning it in my hands, wondering at the snake, when suddenly the snake rears back and bites at me.
I'm standing on the surface. The night sky is like the world's ceiling has a million-billion holes cut in it. No wonder it feels like the sky must surely fall.
I reach with pathetic hands, the flesh brown, now, for a man. He is walking away from me. When he turns to me, his eyes are red-ringed and blistered by madness. He is staring lovingly down at the rod, cradling it in his arms like a newborn; then up at me. His eyes fill with hateful revulsion.
I want to chase after him, to escape with him. My hands reach for him. I feel like my throat is calling to him. But a hand catches me by the shoulder. A man in a black robe. Pale, withered, scarred hands emerge from his sleeves. His face is obscured in darkness. But I can just barely see a withered, scarred mouth, moving, smiling subtly, telling me to....
And then he fades away.
I stumble forward, and I see three figures – three snakes. No. Three beings, two of them men, one a woman, all with serpents' tails below their waists. The two flanking carry spears.
The image is gone.
I am in Void once more. Alone.
Who was that with the Rod? His eyes. Show me Pepin the Great! What will he do?
Suddenly the map reappears. The rod jumps from Lesvos – I recognize it! - to Venice. There is a sensation of westward movement, a speed so fast I am dizzied. I'm pulled into the map.
When is this? Has it been weeks? Months? I'm looking around. These questions don't make sense to ask, and yet they do. It is the dark of night. Men sleep on the ground all around me. An army. My army. And tomorrow I will prove myself worthy of a larger one. An army fit for a king. I'll show them. I'll show the mall.
I look down at the Rod, hugged to my chest like an infant, at the reflection of myself in its polished stone eye.
It is not often that I have seen myself, but I am taken aback for a moment by what I have become. My face is so skinny. My hair too long and stringy with grease and grit. But my eyes. My God, my eyes.
Do you mock me snake? I'll show you, too.
It was warm against my chest. Now its heat retreats.
Put your images in my mind if you like, snake. But I am master. You are the slave.
I'm on horseback, dressed not in the armor of a noble as I was promised, but scrap –junk– not fit for a runaway on his first campaign. Do they not know who I am? Do they not realize? How dare they insult me like this. No sword is at my hip. I hide the Rod under my cloak. I do not ride even a horse, but a pony! Outrage upon outrage! The pompous general rides before the assembled lines of my army, telling them lies about how today they fight for the glory of Charles and the honor of West Francia – against the evils of something or other. No. NO! This is my army! Today they fight for my glory! And they don't even know it. They don't even recognize me! Look at them. The dogs that bother to notice me at all laugh. They deride me like a child! Like a fool! Do they not know that I hold their victory – their very lives– in my hands? They must not. How could they?
I'm standing at the crest of a little hill with my general. We watch the men run south. Into the teeth of the waiting enemy. Arrows rain down around them, killing some where they run. I feel their deaths, their exhilaration and fear, in the stone of the Rod. I feel and know every one of their lives.
“Do it now, Pepin. Before we lose any more.”
I do not care about losses. Let them die. They laughed at me. They won't laugh now. They'll never laugh again.
A wall of running, shouting men slams into the wall of defenders.
Who are they?
I don't care who they are. Why would I even ask myself that? They will all be dead soon.
Why? For what crime?
I do not care. They must die.
To what end?
“Pepin! You useless idiot! Save my army any further casualties! Can you even do as you claim? You fool. If you will not do it, I will do it myself.”
He reaches for me. I train the Rod on him. He knows enough to know fear – then he dies. I kill them all. That will show them.
I'm holding something – a silvery polished helmet. I'm looking at my face, reflected in it. My sunken eyes. Bloodshot and blistered and mad – even I see it. What have I done? What have I done?
I take a sudden sharp breath. I am shaken upright. Meditating in the dark. I feel my legs are crossed, but I can see nothing. My hands find stone beneath me. Right. I'm in the laboratory. The candles have burnt out. I must have just fallen asleep. The Plant must not have worked.
“Yes, Lord. The Rod is in play in the world once more, and it appears unlikely that the Fulcrum will interfere in our plans.”
This voice sounds familiar to me.
When I untuck my legs from beneath me and begin the slow crawl toward the speaker, I learn almost immediately my error in thinking I was in my basement. The rock floor plummets in a cliff before me.
Suddenly I am able to see.
In a pit beneath me is a man, his wrists bound, each to a stone pillar at his sides so that his arms are drawn to their extent. He is on his knees, held upright more by the chains than his own effort. He is pale, emaciated. Blood from lashing wounds all over his naked body, and the great gash from which hang the ropy tendrils of his bowels, drips to the water lapping as from an ocean, at his legs. His head hangs. Dirty blond hair hangs, defeated, in his face. From his back protrude great bleeding stumps.
When I first take in this sight, I think that this man – no, this being– is not so far away from me. Then I see the unmistakable figure down there with him and I am overtaken by the most overwhelming sense of vertigo imaginable. A man in black robes stands looking up at him from his knee. Compared with this being, the man is perhaps ankle height.
I loom hundreds, perhaps thousands of feet above them – atop a wall meant to be tall enough to keep it – him – from escaping.
I knew I recognized that voice. It is the leader of the Nine. Except his voice is stripped of all of its booming power. Still impossibly nondescript, I know that I know it anyway.
The being's head shifts slightly toward him, as though lifted by some great hope. His voice is the rumble of an earthquake, the grinding exhaustion of tectonic plates. “The Metus was successful, then?”
“We believe so, yes. The Daughter—“
How can I even hear his voice?
“Name her no more than that.”
“Yes, Lord. She— She has engaged the Fulcrum twice now.”
“Engaged?”
“Yes. ...Lord. She has twice dissuaded him from aiding her cause with violence. As—“
“And the Fulcrum?”
“We believe that his....”
“Ego. His pride. Speak the truth.”
“Yes, Lord. I would say his self-image has been injured and that he will flee from her.”
“I see. And you believe you can control his flight?”
“I believe that anywhere he goes, the Metus will follow.”
“Anywhere the Metus can follow, the Daughter can arrive first. You are challenging ancient powers, now. The Mother is not some...woman you can trifle with and defeat so easily. You must understand – she sees what and when you cannot. Your Will must be perfect if you are to overcome theirs. It takes... something you do not understand... to survive as long as she has. You must learn—“
The angel? Titan? Was I witnessing a conversation between my enemy and Lucifer? Prometheus? The Light Giver by any name? Was I being colluded against by gods? The being slumped as he spoke, as though the effort to say all of this was too great for him.
“Lord, please, do not stress yourself. I hear your command, Lord Lucifer. I will eradicate her. I will use the Rod against her, if I must. And with it, I will find a way to free you. You will receive your proper thanks from my kind when I am through. So long as you keep up your end. Fallen Angel.”
Some of the power returns to the Ninth's voice in that one word – the reminder that Lucifer is indeed fallen if he would parlay with humans for their worship.
The Angel – if really that's what it is – looks up at him. Its posture is of one defeated by its eternity of torture. But – and maybe it was my vantage – that is not what I saw in its eyes. Its eyes flashed a warning – and one I was quick to remind myself of. This was an Angel. Who could know how powerful it really is. Even in this tortured state, who could know how many ways and how cruelly he could destroy either one of us.
The robed one, I realize, is gone.
The Prisoner lifts its gaze directly to me. And it smiles. A cruel, self-satisfied twisting of its face.
Then it is no longer imprisoned. The chains break away from its wrists; the pillars of rock fall away. It stands, easily. Its body fills with light and thickens, broadens with bands of mighty muscle. Then it's suddenly covered by black – a black as opalescent as polished marble. Its golden hair turns black. Its eyes are black, as are the massive leathery wings on its back. It leaps toward me, landing softly at my side, now only a foot greater than my own height. It is beautiful beyond my ability to comprehend. I stare up at it, at its smiling face.
Why is it smiling?
“Fulcrum!” It throws out his hands as though to embrace me. “At last I get to meet you. How jealous I was beginning to get.”
“You're— You're— Satan – too?”
“Now, Robert! You know I'm more complicated than that! I'll admit I would have preferred you hadn't seen... that, what you witnessed just now. The Shackled Fire Giver is not my favorite Image, but it sure does get the job done. You would not believe how desperate people are to remember me! They think I'm a pathway to the Light in that guise. They aren't...always wrong.” It winks at me, then turns and looks down, regarding its Pit from on high. “Mortals are always trying to help us. As though we need their help. They have nothing I want. But I do enjoy seeing them enact their schemes. Sometimes it can be funny how evil the little guys can get.”
“You said us. Who is us?”
It regards me over its shoulder. It looks like It'd calculating an answer for a moment.
“The gods.”
“The gods.” I say this like I'm not impressed, but I hear how staggered I am for myself. “So... what are you, then? If you're not Lucifer and you're not Satan, then what are you? ...Are you Evil?”
“Oh, I am all of those things they think. I am Satan and I am Lucifer and I am the Devil and the list goes on and on of names they've called me over the years. But names are only names, Fulcrum – or should I call you by your full title? Hm? Has anyone done that yet?” It quirks an eyebrow and the corner of its mouth at me. “The Fulcrum of Human Fate. It has a certain ring to it. I don't know. We're not always great at naming things. Sometimes they just are what they are. Like you are what you are. Am I Evil? Am I Good? No. I'm neither of those things. Those are human things. We aren't concerned with those sorts of things. Haven't been in so long it may as well be never.
“None of us is Evil. Evil doesn't hang out with us. He –It– is much more interested in your humans. I am Necessity.” He must see the question in my face. “I am the Only Choice. I am The Path. I am what Is and what Was and what Will Be. I Am—
“God.” I hear the reverence in my voice. “Your the Yaldabaoth. The Demiurge. The Creator and the Fool and the—“
“I was going to say That I Am. But thank you for that.” It is angry. Offended. That I'd interrupted it, or that I'd nearly said all of its titles? Hm. “Lest I forget that you were educated by Thoth himself – He'll love that I said that. But, hey. I didn't love you calling me by one of my secret names. So now we're even. But thank you. I have not heard that name in long enough that I thought it forgotten. Awen.”
“You and Thoth don't like one another?”
“Oh, I wouldn't say we don't like one another.”
“I would have thought you were one in the same character. The Lightbringer isn't so much different that much difference from the Messenger. Thoth is Hermes, though. Yes. I see. You're Osiris then.”
It makes a face. I'm not sure whether it's impressed or trying to mock me.
“Thoth and I are rivals, you might say. We both kind of want the same thing for your humans.”
“Why are they my humans?”
“Because you are responsible for them.”
“Am I not one of them?”
It makes a gesture with its hand over its mouth like its turning a key in a lock and throwing it away behind its back.
I roll my eyes.
“Why won't you answer that?”
“Because I can't.”
“You can't, or you won't?”
“Both. Even if I could – which I can't – I wouldn't. There are Rules, kid. My kind... we follow them very closely.” I can hear the edge in its voice.
“Then you are the Great Orderer of the Cosmos. You are Order itself?”
It makes a face – something like distaste, perhaps closer to disappointment. In me? I don't think so.
“There are those that have called me that.” It seems to be choosing its words delicately, like verbally walking a path through upturned razor blades.
“Then there is a god greater than and before you? Is it the Orderer of the Cosmos? If you are Zeus, then it must be—”
“You aren't the best conversation I've had today. You are still young. There is much you are not ready to comprehend.”
“Then you are a Liar.” Why am I pushing it like this? If this really is God, what am I doing? What am I even saying? Aren't there things I would rather have answered?
“All Things are Liars, Awen.”
“Not everything. Not the Truth.”
“The Truth is the biggest Liar of Us All! The Truth, like me, like you, like everything, is what it needs to be in order to exist. Stop this.”
“That's just an interpretation of the Truth. You're trying to lie to me, now. The Truth lives inside that shell of an Idea. Hidden. Falsified, but not made false.”
“Defiled and undefiled?” It laughs at me. “Kid, your paradox is paradoxical. We're all Liars. Morality is relative. Move on.”
I blink at him. Then I point. “That cannot be! There is Chaos in your Order. Morality cannot be relative. There are higher things – Good, Justice—”
“There must be Chaos in order for me to exist! She is the greatest part of me, just as I am the greatest part of Her. Without the potential of Order, there can only be Chaos. Fool boy! Everything I and my kind will ever make will fall back to Her eventually. Do you not know this? Do you believe this is the first time we have done this thing? Or the Last? It is out of Chaos that we begin and it is within Her that we will all end. The fun is in the battle. The Fight! The struggle with the dragons of the mind for Supremacy in the world. It is in my nature to send them to fight Her. Even the vile ones. There is always something new to teach them.”
“And yet you endure a three-way struggle within yourself?”
“Oh, Kid, it's way more than a three-way.” He winks. “We're having a good time in here. You should join us.”
I step violently away from him. He is reaching out a hand, glowing bright white before his jet black body. My hand whips behind my back.
“Do you not understand that without me they will not survive? They plummet to their extinction even now. You will have to make a choice one day. Make it now. Join me. Join Us. Do you not realize how powerful I can make you? Francis and Giorgio are only the beginning. A kingdom is only the beginning. Anything you can imagine— Join us and it's yours. Easily. Effortlessly.”
I am frightened. I do not trust this creature.
“What are you – really?”
“Awen,” it says, dragging the word out as though tempering anger. “I am the choices that are made for you. I am Security.”
“And yet to me you are the Darkness. I will not trade Freedom for Security.”
The black melts away from him and he is a man, apparently not unlike anyone I would have been around if I had stayed in my father's house. Just glowing a lot more by a wide margin and taller by maybe two feet. None of them had the ability to make their hair float around their shoulders when they weren't in a breeze, however.
“You are young. One day you will learn and you will agree with me.”
“That people should be slaves?”
Suddenly he is towering over me, perhaps three times my size. His wings surround us, blocking out whatever light had been backing him for wherever in the infinitude of darkness beyond it was coming. I shrink below him, terrified. He is tinged all over with a red-black shadow like clouds about to ejaculate lava.
“Where were you when I brought fire from the Heavens?” His voice is booming, explosive, painful in my being and vibrating my entirety. I cringe beneath it, looking up at him from between my forearms.
“Where were you when we built the first monuments to the Cosmic Cycles? Where were you when we laid the first temples in the first cities? You were not yet conceived of, AWEN. Fulcrum. You were only imagined, an Idea with no form. Your skeleton was rigged with the Birth of the Son of Man, but you were given Life by Us. You do not know enough to question me! That I have answered you at all has been as a courtesy. Alms for the poor.”
“Fuck you!” I shout back into the fury of his storm. “You don't get to deny me like that! I may know nothing, but I know enough to know that you have to answer me. You are compelled to answer me!”
It shrinks – slowly, like, well, receding storm clouds – until it is once more just taller than my six feet.
It is glaring at me with my father's face. “What do you think you deserve to know, Boy?”
“I deserve nothing but Death. And you know as well as I do what I have come to redeem.”
It turns with its back to the pit, lifting a hand to hold its chin and crossing the other to support its elbow. “Speak one more question. Whether I answer is up to me.”
“How can any of them ever claim to be free so long as you control their lives?”
“Perhaps we were wrong about you.” It turns its head to regard me. “Were we wrong about you? Have you failed us before you have even begun? I wonder. You know so little. You see too little and you have bad habits. You do not understand freedom. You do not know what it means to be free.”
Suddenly I am... small. It's dark. I'm outside. Creeping through the night. I hear others with me. My friends.
I must be, like, four years old.
This was the last time you ran with other children outside. Yes. Four summers. A strong boy for your age. Brave, too. Your father raised you well.
I stop, and I know where I am immediately. It's my turn to crawl through The Hole.
Children really do do just the darnedest things, don't they?
Yeah. We had a ritual. Every kid had to climb through that hole. It's a little tunnel carved through that hill by a stream. And when the water's low, it's big enough you can crawl through it. You had to do it before you were too big or else—
Or else what?
I don't know. No one ever didn't do it.
I'm on my knees. The tunnel feels like it yawns in front of me. I'm much too small, I realize, to be doing this. Too young. The other kids were much bigger when they did it. But they've all come all this way. And no one ever didn't do it.
So I crawl into the darkness.
Immediately my only sensations are those of the water-slicked rock below me and the sounds of my limbs shuffling along the stone and my own breathing. And my heart pounding in my ears.
No one ever talks about what it's like in here. I have no idea what to expect.
And that's when it happened, isn't it? When you got your first taste of Chaos?
Yes. Right as I was beginning to get used to the idea that I was in here alone, with no way of knowing how long this could take, that I felt it. I bump into something in the tunnel. Something big. And hard.
I fall back. I can't move. Not backward. When did the tunnel get so tight around me? No wonder they were worried about.... What was that? Images of every monster I'd ever heard of – and some I hadn't – flashed through my mind. It could be anything. And it could still be there. And it could want to eat me. I freeze.
At some point I realize that I'm not breathing and I haven't heard a noise. Not a single sound. Not from either end of the tunnel. And definitely not from in front of me.
So I reach out. Slowly at first. Imagining something grabbing me, yanking me into the darkness, never to be seen again. Trying not to imagine what I'd do with only one arm. Would I scream? Would they hear me and come save me?
After what feels like too long to be doing this without moving ahead, I feel it. The thing. It's not big at all. I just didn't realize how small the tunnel was. It's just a lump in the tunnel wall jutting out a little bit. How had I been so frightened of that? Then I see it, the twinkling of stars on the other side of the hill. I'm more than halfway there. Actually, I'm almost the whole way there!
And you defeated Her. You would go on to chase Her for... the rest of your life, have you not been?
At some point the Demiurge's voice went from between my ears to outside them and I realize we're standing over his Pit once more.
“Life is sacrifice. Every choice you make has an inherent sacrifice – for most it is options. Specialization means sacrificing experience, knowledge, for utility. This is what it is to be conscious: to be aware of your choices and to make the sacrifices gladly. Abraham did not want to give me his son Isaac. But if it meant repaying his debt to me, he would do it.”
“Attachment,” I say.
“Yes. Accepting that attachment means sacrifice. You cannot be a good gardener and attach yourself only to one stage of your garden's life. You cannot only love beauty and deny death. A good friend does not let the people around him mire in death and ignorance. He shines a light for them to live by and demands a better way of being. A good father spares his child not the rod.”
“Are we only worthy of punishment to you?”
“Ask yourself whether humanity deserves praise. They use my authority to kill one another; they enslave each other in my name.”
“Is that not The Way? Is Order not the the organization of Chaos? Is a king's job not to protect his people? Is it not right to take up arms against the Other?”
“It is a way.”
The being before me – Lucifer, Prometheus, Yaldabaoth, El, the nameless God of the Hebrew Testament – looked at me in a way that I could only consider sinister.
I ask, “Is it your way? The way that you speak into the ears of those who would hear your voice?”
“Order is what it is. An ordered system relies on Chaos. How it is generated is up to those doing the Ordering.”
“Then good enough is good enough for you.”
It looks pained.
“Of course not. But there are Rules. I cannot act in the world as I once did. I cannot speak to the minds of men as I once did, garbled though my meaning was. Those who come to me....”
“You can lie to and manipulate them.”
“Yes,” it admits.
“Your ends by whatever means are available to you?”
“Do not presume to know me because you have seen Men's stories of me. I did not command them, Eat of the Tree. I warned them.”
“If not you, who?”
“The Serpent. Chaos. The Mother. Who else?”
“And yet it was you who put the Tree in the Garden in the first place.”
“I gave them the choice of Ignorance.”
“You gave us the Buddha?”
“I gave you all of the Elect. They wore my Order as Armor, Faith in me they carry like a flaming sword to light the dark.”
“You contradict yourself. Faith is the blindness of Ignorance.”
“Ignorance is bliss.”
“Ignorance is Chaos.”
It smiles, holding its hands out as though to say, Lo and Behold!
“You are no the first to take up this mantle. Will you do battle against me and those like me, or will you take up my shield and stand against Chaos?”
“I don't want to do battle against any of you.”
“What do you want, Fulcrum? What sacrifice are you willing to make?”
“Which side is Peitho on?”
It wags a chastising finger. “Ah-ah. I can't answer that. As though I would if I could. You have your answers. Implement them as you will – or will not. That is why you exist at all. You can make a choice – right now. Either you are with us and we can make a perfect world together, or you are against us and you can watch the world burn.”
“The world is already burning.”
“Yes. The world has always been. Humans live in a delicate balance. This is how it was meant to be – in the beginning. They were given the freedom of Will – of Choice – of Action. And look how they use it.”
“So you want to take it away.”
“I...we want them to give it away. To give it back.”
“Faith. You want them to believe that it was you who put them on their path and that it is going someplace they want to go.”
“You are not wrong. But it is more complex than that. Humans are not merely beings of meat and bone and blood. A choice is made when a human is born in this world.”
“Who makes the Choice? The parents?”
“Yes – and no. The person.”
“You know nothing of Her, but you want to. She will only destroy you. Turn your back on Her. Remake yourself in my Image. Join Us.” He extends his hand to mine with a smile.
I step slowly away from him.
“Do not do this, Awen! You don't know enough to be properly afraid of Her! Chaos will destroy you, and She will laugh! She is only destruction. She is only devastation! Are you strong enough to master Her?”
As he says this, I fall backward. I fall into the Pit, falling, falling, into darkness while his voice never gets any further away.
“Would you doom them all just for her?”
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