Purifier
Author's Note: Enjoy the poem and R&R.
Disclaimer: I do not own anything related to or of Magic: The Gathering.
Summary:
A poem based on Avacyn's transformation from Innistrad's divine protector to its fiery iconoclast.
In the fog-drenched world of an Impaler's shadow, the monsters dwell
Enfamished by demons corrupting the soil, this subterranean hell
Souls to the harvest circling without the Blessed Sleep
They shan't be dead a moment, so the living must weep
Corpses denied the sanctity of holy writ
Tales unearthed from a treacherous pit
Pulleyed into a skaberen's surgical kit
Or swamped up via grafdigger's cage, bit by bit
Back from the brink
Ghoulcallers' unburial rites dripping an abattoir's stink
Ashmouth taskmasters, greedy and ravenous
How flagitious they must be, morbidly sly and cantankerous
Drinking from chalices of Skirsdag initiates
Deaf to the pleas of their foolish subordinates
Cast to the nothingness between nothings
Warbling broken, mired, and shapeless on mangled wings
Shilgengar, who bid eminence to blood
Markov Manor stands vigil, an impious chapel to his curse upon the mud
Griselbrand, my mortal foe
Speared by moonsilver and bound in the Helvault, our shared woe
Flashes back
Memory cracks
Here astounds the mind-wracking damnation of a haunted plane
Geists abound, rattling their chains
Untamed in the hunt, the werewolves howl
Skaabs shamble the lodges, looking for fodder to disembowel
Moans of the undying Unhallowed, pounding on Thraben's gates
The vampires feast, in contempt of their food source's falling rates
Soon they will have none but themselves to eat
Stensia, Gavony, Kessig, and Nephalia – in creatures replete
My creator's shame
Held the bloodsuckers to blame
Who looted hamlets beyond the pale
Bled the land until it was stale
I am his compromise
A farmer's equilibrium, shepherd of the sunrise
Balance, my lord decrees
And so through my church, the darkness flees
Except in my absence, when peccancy ran unchecked
Free of the vault, an oversight I set out to correct
At the shattering choice born of a necromancer's trysts
The stone the tree of redemption shelters releases me and the renegade recidivists
Above the blasted remnants, I hear surviving humanity's droning prayers
Ten thousand petitioners' cries for salvation, melded despairs
Bonded together by miracle
Flickering from endangerment, a restoration most lyrical
To arms, archmages, cathars, and priests!
Take back the dawn! Repel the beasts!
In the light of brightest new day
Something squirms into being among the horrors at bay
A shimmer. A glitch?
The hex of a witch?
I, guardian of these provinces, investigate
Yet in due time, I hasten to castigate
My vision doubles. Runic obelisks festoon
Reflection of a gibbous, eldritch moon
For certain, an attack
But its source I cannot track
Aeons torn, individuality plundered
Biology warped, hope sundered
As without, so within
After the promised end, all you've been
Inchoate attitudes aligned to an unmentionable will
Ululates beneath the wharf, unnameable even to the squamous krill
Abuzz my brain, the ever-present thought
Indistinguishable what once was and what once was not
Blistering is Kelse towards Maeli, a mother towards her child
Gone is my tolerance, however mild
They are transformed into hideous worms
Heretics! Apostates! Loathsome germs!
The seeds of men are rotten
They are better off forgotten
Only ignoble wretches breed such harshness
Despicable and sinful, this – this madness!
An inquisition, I call
This disease my hosts angelic shall burn and forestall
You pray to me on high
On bloodstained wings remorseless I fly
Keep sterile your souls. Keep sterile your lives
May angels descend upon you from the skies
Rejoice!
Follow my voice!
You will all be saved!
Lo, through anguished unmaking, the path to purity will be paved
Emerge unto the grass of this consecrated ground
Escalate yourselves that stained glass may quicken with life, the glaze profound
Pray not your lies to me
Pulses the Drownyard's apogee
Wherefore is litany any more useless?
Before a gaze blank and pitiless
Do not lose faith to be circumspect
I am Avacyn. I am to protect