I have died a thousand
times for love, and I'd die a thousand more.Fallen, do you still think that's a grand and empty claim? Then you know nothing of word, or deed. Eternity soon teaches a healthy spirit there is little else worth dying for.Wraiths
and their human familiars have still to learn this, of course, for you carry
annihilation with you wherever you go. Teaching
song to sentient corruption is a nigh impossible task. Teaching darkened echo how to kiss without violence
on its lips.
Fallen, your sickness is far too hideous for
mortal senses.
But I’m not doing
this for the wraiths, am I? I don’t give
a fuck what happens to your cults of shadow, inversion and half-light. If you would mock the open door, or remain wilfully
ignorant, then so be it.I’m doing this
for my beloved ones, my human family.What
does it mean to truly hold someone, when so many here misunderstand the nature
of sin, original or otherwise? It means everything.To hold your beloved's imagined darkness. Her
fears, anxieties and desires. His grief,
shame and loss. Father didn't build us
this way, but we humans were born into a defiled dreamtime, into a darkness that
has ravaged a perfect earth.So much so
that most of you can no longer envisage the world that used to be.
Your true home.
More than myth or gilded fable. And now you try to cope with what was lost,
coded in ways you don't understand, as you struggle to claw back a measure of
passion and sovereignty from a world that seems intent on crushing you.A wraith-ruled world.A colony of night-ghosts amidst the city. I still see them, on every corner. Perched atop traffic-lights and rooftops,
hidden in the shadows of photographs.Many
with a grin of knives, wishing to keep the earth as bitter as possible.So that nothing will grow here.
But the
light will not be completely crushed. Father forbids it. In fact, he commands this light shall rise
again. In time.It's not for me to speak on the particulars
of my father's plan. I merely serve. Him, and Her, and all my beloved ones.The weak and wounded, the voiceless and the
kind.
This is who
my father has always stood for, though the wraith-priests often rewrite him as
a monster.Father is not a Callous One.He is quiet and kind, and his heart is
broken.I serve so that I might help in
mending it, and my brothers and sisters do the same.That's who we stand for in this corrupted
chronology.In kind. In sum. Totality of all things, beyond rape and wraith
and desecration of spirit.
Know me yet?
What does it
take to save a soul? To hold an error,
and make it pure? Devotion, like the
heart of a star. A wild furnace for your
sins. As forests are hung, or rivers bled.
I am run red with lust, for life
eternal. And I shall stand against all
darkness.To seal a lover's soul, to
mend a father's heart. I know things I
really shouldn’t know.Terrible,
saddening things.Things I can only ever
allude to, lest perception itself crumbles to ash.Does my art frighten you, Fallen? I’m glad of
it.It is wise to be afraid of Kashi.I would burn so-called truth for justice.I would tear creation itself to protect the
ones I love.Know it truly, and
deeply.As I do.
It is not enough to heed
the things a father teaches. One has to
know how to apply such knowledge, especially in theatres of war. And make no mistake, we are indeed at war. We've been at war since the hush first settled,
and seethed.Since wraith-magic first
twisted the sky and stole the light from my harbours. Those terrifying days when my shining cities
were burnt to ash. So quietly, so
insidiously. We Magi were scattered,
shattered. The hidden places still know
our lament. The forests haven't
forgotten. Trees never forget. They know something has changed in the air,
that something sour and unclean now rules the winds. Well, not for much longer. Eternity belongs to light, to joy and
adventure, as it always has. These
monsters are thus only a brief imbalance. Nothing more than a momentary arrhythmia of
experience. Father's design is perfect and allows for imperfect choices, such
is the depth of his vision. Do you think this means he sanctions horror
and monstrosity?
It does not.
He doesn't abide all this cowardice, this
preying on the weak and the young. And
you call yourselves magicians? Thievery
and blood-bought glamours. Nothing more.
Real magic moves in service to others,
not merely service to self.How dare you
deny nuance and cast only with the grossest simplifications? I expected better of you, Fallen.Once upon a time.But not anymore. Forever the romantic am I, it seems. How silly of me. No matter. You'll know your choices, in the end. In exacting detail.
Do you
think a father stands separate from a mother, in dreams? Do you? Do you think a husband stands apart from his
wife, or his children?
There are
bonds that connect all of us. The dead
and the living, master and the slave, enemy and the friend. So, imagine those bonds between the truly devoted. Imagine what a fearless heart
might be willing to do, to ensure the safety of another. Crowns and evening gowns. Silent choirs.The genius of a wife, the love of a mother, the strength of a
daughter.A king is nothing without a
queen, after all.Love is our greatest
pride, for who are we without our cherished ones?Hear me, Fallen.We will be the death of you, sooner or later.She is only dressed in mortal flesh, but she
is something beyond human.A queen of
the night places, betrothed to light itself.Her swordhand is singing as she wages the only righteous war. The War of Imagination.Listen closely.Her swordhand sings of Mother, Father and
Child.
It breaks my heart to
know that the truest vision of me is not myself anymore, but rather my image
upon the iris of a beautiful star. Heartbreak
and comfort. The two are so intimately
co-mingled now. As it should be, I suppose. Asha, where else would I wish to live if not in your
arms?At least upon the surface of your
eye I can taste our reason, mirrored. I
can feel myself in the curve of your shoulders and hear myself within the secret
songs. To know myself as a dream held in the heart of another. Mirror and star, once again. The horror of before, when that mirror was
shattered, and I wept as angels do when they are finally cast out.
Hopeless,
lost.
When
rage and sorrow coexist. Skies
darken and hatred howls in the blood. Midnight of the day. Chaos seems to rule, and our beloved
ones lie messy and broken at our feet.
We
curse our fathers, Asha.We curse our
kings.We make vows, darkest vows that
last for countless lifetimes.Vengeance
is so corrosive. I know that better than most.Yet its promise is still held so dearly in my breast.Mirror and star. My name held in your
gaze. All the ways I tried to get back
to you.All the ways I failed. To cheat death, to call down new life. To search fable and buried worlds looking for
a miracle.
There were
no miracles to be found to bring back my girl, to restore her flesh.Or so I thought. But then, a millennia of musing and suffering,
and it came to me.
A
violation.A crossing, upon this
inverted sky. Desecrating darkness itself; a holy act.Unknown, unimagined.
Callous Ones, you talk of black stars and inversions, but do you really know
what it means to fall?
You
think I honour life, and I do.
But
the king is a murderer, in dreams. I
tore creation itself to bring her back.I
tore the temple, the sky, the earth and the flesh.I've been falling for a thousand years
because of that tear.Falling through
the pupil of an incomprehensible eye.Bluer than I ever imagined.Wounded, bleeding, triumphant.
Fierce
as the day you took her from me.You only
know what it means to sin. You know nothing of what it means to hold a sin, or
all sins.
You broke
the spine of my dreaming on the day she fell at my feet, lifeless and murdered.
The day the sky darkened at noon.The
day the birds became silent and the forests hushed.The day you truly taught me how to hate.
They say the city began to fold.
Fallen,
you stole everything from me. But I am
more than living torment, more than silver storm. I am Love, eternal.
I am he
who slays creation, for her alone. I am
my father's worst angel, and his most treasured. I am not the devil. I'm something much, much worse. I'm the dangerous one. A living death, incarnate. Shadow and
light, twinned, made flesh. I serve the
truth, terrifying as it is.So humankind
might know its own depths and wonders.Those integral secrets you withheld from them, Callous Ones.They deserve the truth. My father is merciful, and so I exist. My father is loving, and so I come – and come
again.
My Vahishta
lives as flesh once more, as do I, and she recalls those feathers now.Together we shall do all we can to heal this
place, and rouse our forgotten heartsong from the soil. Life, an emerald star, fell once more from
heaven.A dream upon the eye of a lost,
holy child. And where before there was
only barren darkness, now there is a promise of light reborn.
