Title: Fiat Lux
Author: Koi Lung Fish
 Disclaimer: Based on characters and situations from Final Fantasy VII (© 1997, 1998 Square Co., Ltd). Used without permission. Text © 2001, Koi Lung Fish (Mark of Lung. All Rights Reserved.)
Subject: Vincent makes a painful decision.

            God said, let there be light.

            Beyond the horizon, the light builds: the inrushing solar tide, the dust cloud of the sunbeam stampede, the haze of the celestial brushfire. The stars pale away at the very intimation of the approaching dawn.

            Upon this hillside I wait like a hermit, a heliotrope, a carnivorous plant about to rediscover photosynthesis.

            Come, sunlight, burn me away. Banish the darkness inside me with your pageant of light's glories. Come burn me open, shine through this tainted glass my flesh.

            Sun's aura brightens the sky; a halo of colour surging over the plains. Already the brightness makes my eyes water, my cold flesh tremble at the coming of radiant heat incarnate. The wash of light spills across forest and farmland, stirring the chorus of birds; cacophony.

            The great double doors of the horizon swing open; the burning eye opens over the spine of the world. Red lightning scars the backs of my eyes as the universe stares deep into my tainted soul, unjudging, undelivering.

            Flay me, Sun! Scorch away my sins, sear out my filthy eyes, boil my blood and cook my body from within. Let your bright fingers find out the depths of my secrets . . .

            . . . I can look no more; the sun sits upon the horizon, red as Armageddon after the armies have passed by. My legs quiver, my eyes see bright shadows, ghost suns filling my vision.

            I have sin, and sin to spare; come, Father of the Chaos, pluck out my eyes with your fiery fingers; dry my skin and shrivel my flesh. I am mould and fungus, fit to desiccate in your pure light.

            Already the sun lifts from its mountain cradle, yellow and young; warrior with spear, an iridescent lance that leaves white holes in my vision. Let me feast on this splendour. One last, perfect dawn before our Ragnarok, and the perpetual twilight that waits ahead.

            Behind the Sun rises the spectre of the future, a cool sun rolling down on this gilded Planet, trailing fumes and pocked as a diseased face.

            Claim me, Sun, let me fly free of this poisoned clay. Let me embrace the heat thirty years of sleep has denied to my china flesh; let my soul rise on heron wings to the blazing glory. Deliver me, Sun, upon the dawn of the day, the eve of war. For thirty years I have waited, dreaming sinner punished in and unto darkness, nightmares lit by eclipse-rotten moonlight; let me come now into the sunlight forever.

            I can no longer see; the Sun has burned my eyes quite blind. I feel the heat on my flesh, the sweat insect-walking down my spine, the ache of tired muscles. Turning my face to the heart of the sun, I, poor little flower, can feel the heat of midday lean down and press me into the cold clay, flesh of the Planet as gross and polluted as my own.

            Will not you take me, Sun? Will you not free me from this future, these choices I must make? Can I do what I must?

            Even upon the balance of the universe, with the Planet in the cup of Justice's scales, can I truly give my own flesh and blood for the life of a million strangers?

            Open a gate into the sky, Sun; take me away from this choice.

            What God asks me to do this, what arch-fiend amongst supernal sadists? What sin could require this atonement?

            Is not the atonement greater sin than the first sin itself?

            Sun, you leave me here, a blind man seeking answers in the light of revelations; Sun, you leave me standing, alone, without answers.

            Would that her finger were upon the scales. Lucrecia, tell me what to do! Tip the scales, uncheck the balance, unleash chaos upon this frozen order, this mockery of Justice.

            I could more easily slice out my own heart than give what Justice demands.

            Oh, Sun, luminescent Lucifer whose hot palm crushes me to the rocks, won't you give me an answer? Won't you light me a path through the thorn bushes and the rocks?

            The light of tomorrow shines behind you, Sun; a blood-red and awful reign of light. My son, his fist upraised to smite the heavens, a foul sun clasped in his palm with which to sear the heart of the Planet, with which to flay it open.

            Oh, Sun, flay me open. Eviscerate me with heat. Make cinders of my bones. I kneel before thee, supine and helpless in your flaming grasp. Take me, Sun, and leave tomorrow out of my reach.

            I am the burning man; beneath the lintel of the sky, the heel of Amon grinds me into the baking dust. The double doors of the horizon are open above me; the poison in my flesh unveils my putrefied eyes, and I see red shadows of tomorrow: death, destruction. Jenova filters today into the future through my wretched eyes.

            How many times must I gouge them out these vile and blazing sunset eyes before she ceases to make them dawn again, wet and hot and bloody as the day before?

            Leave me, Sun, as you set upon the heather-fleeced horizon. Leave me with the choice of the damned, with Jenova's finger tipping the scales of Justice.

            This weak flower blooms with the rising of that foul sun tumbling earthwards, cloaked in a mantle of poison. Still the sun, wither the leaf, destroy the root. The pure Sun has forsaken me, filthy sinner lit and leavened by the star-spawn reaching down to crack the spine of the world. I shall go into the darkness of midnight, my eyes twin suns – as red and as hot and as wet as blood and fear and sunset – and I shall kill the son who makes the sun to rise. Kill the seed, kill the leaf, kill the root.

            Tomorrow there will be no sun in the sky but the pure Sun, yellow and bright and clean, as this filthy body rots in the darkness unlit by my poison son.

Author's notes & addenda:
            Competition closed. I wasn't expecting so many answers so fast! The Egyptian god of the dawning or morning sun is Khepri or Khepri (the name means "he who comes into being" or "he who creates himself"), represented as a scarab or scarab-headed man. The got of the mid-day sun is Amon or Amun, represented as young man. The god of the evening sun … this was the one that tripped everyone up. The god of the evening sun can either be Atum, also called Tem, Temu or Atem, and three people gave this as the answer. However, the god of the evening sun is also Ra, the falcon-headed father god, and together the three make the composite god Khepri-Amun-Ra, supreme god of the later dynasties – and nobody gave this as an answer. However, seeing as how Atum is a correct answer, the competition is indeed closed thereupon. Of the three people who gave answers, only two gave the descriptions of the gods that I asked for - sorry, scarr! - and of those two, one was Scarlet Seraph – who had my last gift fic. Cheeky girl! ;). So the winner is Xue!

            Feedback excruciatingly welcome.

            Amon: Egyptian god of the mid-day sun.

            Armageddon: (Biblical, Greek from Hebrew; har megiddon Hill of Megiddo). The last and final battle.

            Father of Chaos: Astrological term for the Sun.
            Fiat Lux: Latin; lit. "Let there be light."

            Heliotrope: (Greek via Latin; helios sun + trepein to turn). A plant which turns its leaves towards the sun.

            Ragnarok: Norse, the last and final battle.

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