Epiphany's Scourge~

Dear Readers:

If you happened upon a story entitled "Stopwatch" that said it was the sequel of "Epiphany's Child", this is the alternate version of that same story, which I tried as a sort of expiriment for how to continue this, thought it was going to work, but secretly hated it from the very beginning. If I don't like what I'm writing then I don't expect you to want to read it either!

In case any one is wondering, "Epiphany's Child" and "Epiphany's Scourge" will have a final companion. I call the three of them "The Epiphany Triune" but I haven't decided on the name of the third one yet.

Hopefully this will go better than the last attempt at continuing what was a difficult story ,emotionally, to write in the first place.

Thank those of you who read this for doing so!~ Servant of Fire

Prolouge~

He feels like he's drowning in Mercy's tears.

The child had begged him not to leave, of course, he couldn't understand a word she was saying, she was speaking Serbian.

Now John was under-water, heavy and cold as the sorrow of Epiphany's Child, the little girl that had been merciful to Sherlock as her name had implied, and would forever be the incarnation ,in John's dreaming mind, of that dark place called Serbia, that seemed to be in another solar system, so far away and surreal was that dark hour of his life.

This moment somehow is even darker. The hours are growing far darker, just as the night does before the Dawn.

It was Sherlock's firm belief that John himself was Dawn,and proof that there was a God still.

He's very unsteady in his own faith, sinking as he is into the oblivion of the Indus River. Clawing for the chain to the casket, of the man cast in the river, that he prays to God on High, is not Sherlock after all.

Sherlock...

John has been a soldier. A doctor. A detectives assistant...

But now he is a hunter, as feral as the jungles of India.

He is hunting men...The men that took Sherlock into some unknown darkness,within the shadows of these trees.

The Indus river swirls about him,as dark and filled with clay, like the swirling of the main-highway that runs through Atlantis, and he feels lost in the great metropolis of the souls of the dead.

He dives,as deep as he can with what breath is left in him.

His ribs are aching, like the wings of a stone eagle, trying to fly with his spirit, to tear free from the chain that is his spine. Or like great jaw of a spirit-whale, sounding somewhere through the abyss of his soul, looking for that great oceaninc blackness that was the bonded-brother of his spirit.

Sherlock,...

His heart is throbbing. He is drowning now, but he must know.

He cracks the coffin open under water.

There is an ancient man within, some poor old soul murdered,and cast within the chambers of the water, never to be found.

Sorry for him.

But it wasn't the man he was looking for, amongst the moving waters of the dead...

Sherlock.

His head breaks the surface,and he gasps. He hears the scream of monkeys far away in the night, fleeing some terror that lives in the jungle,has lived there since before God gave Man light.

Not Sherlock...

His gasps of the heavy night air, are ones of relief, and at the same time foreboding.

For he had yet to find where he truly was...