Episode 1 Kneeling Day: part 6

MYSELF, DREAMSPACE?

Once people believed gods spoke in dreams. So they dreamed of their gods, of having a tiger's head, of seeing seven fields raise and then wither, of figures cloaked in thunder and of Morpheus who speaks from every mouth glimpsed in the night. When the day broke they ran to soothsayers and oracles to interpret these divine messages. They were answered by the same words every seer offers to the waiting crowd, words I myself offered: One dreams of wealth, another of love, another of his near death. Now nothing has changed. Perhaps they are fewer those who seek the truth in half-remembered riddles and images. Still some do and receive the same answers anyone who asked the invisible ever had.

I dream but I will not content myself with such paltry answers. I'm not home in a world where we uncovered the void and recoil at its sight. I'm in a place where when you call out in the darkness, the silence answers with a voice of its own. I'm in a place where prayers are still answered for better and for worse and I don't fear any knowledge. For he who seeks truth, no terror can ever touch him.

I'm wandering what I know now be my own heart with every secret laid bare, every wound gaping in the open. Nightmares made flesh and cackling fantasies walk in my shadows, haunt my steps, cry to me in hope of attention, in hope of being fed. I don't look at them for I know them already, I know them too much. They can't scream, they can taunt but I don't have to listen to them, as long as I know them. For it's only when you gazed deep into the shadows than you know what you can allow to step into the light.

I walk without being tired, passing both terror and desire, passing monuments to the colors of the rainbow, mumbling about the seven sins and the seven costs, everything and nothing, the slow wheel of life that turns without ceasing, about beauty that chains to the world. For my pleasure I sing the words of Baudelaire on death, a fitting tribute to my gods I come to meet inside myself, perfect temple and perfect offering:

"Mais dîtes à la vermine/Qui vous manger de baisers/Que j'ai gardé la forme et l'essence divine/De mes amours décomposées.

But say to the vermin/Who will eat you with their kisses/That I kept the divine essence and form/Of my decayed love"

I leave long hallways twisting and turning with every breath and their riddles and their decorations. Grids of burnished brass, gates closed to the darkness within, to the shadows that are part of all that breathe. Did I walk these hallways home without ever remembering? Did my mind organize itself like a castle of memories with each stone a sign and a reminder? How could I know. Even if my guide would tell me, how could I believe him? The Baron said my soul and my mind were hollowed then extended and instinctively I follow the breeze of air and the foreign scent to where the gods wounded me and healed me.

I see him in these rooms where rain fall and feet strike pools of water dark and deep. I see him in room where every tear ever shed shine like moonlight and every stone is made of a thought you've made pondering about death and the afterlife. I see him beyond gates where a reaping skeleton harvest from a black field where emerges two human heads and countless dispatched limbs. I see him and from that glance I burn for him.

Never mortal man enthralled me so, never painting or sculpture or all objects born from man's imagination captured my attention so. Sculpted by the hands of gods, he's beautiful as them. Smiling and ever shifting he let me see all his shapes, all his wiles. Greek statues of a young athlete with glistening bronze skin and polished immobile eyes, Egyptian painting with limbs positioned wrongly but so perfect in proportion, obsidian-skinned youth with jade jewelry and feathers and bones to adorn his nudity. And just out of sight, out of mind, just glimpsed, never looked in full, himself in silver and black, incubus in majesty. Innocent yet alluring, powerful but servile, protector, protected, beautiful as a dream of stone.

Heavy is my desire of him, my need of his embrace. In this place where thought is fact, I see my interest escape my chest to crawl around me, coiling around me like living shadow whispering of games, whispering of wants too great to be easily denied. Oh kiss me, love! Look at me, take some pity of me and let my lips embrace yours. A kiss of you and then I'd die of it. I was never one for passion but that creature I can't even describe was crafted for my pleasure in the very heart of my mind. I walk to him, using all my willpower to not run.

And when I'm near enough to smell the heady perfume of his silver locks, the illusion crumbles. In this palace where thought is real I feel his, rigid and artificial, chained and neutered by our masters. When his form changes a new set of rigid rules, a new mask made to remind me of duties, to help the gods understand the world without them and me to understand the gods. He is not sentient. Even if he's a very good imitation, the shackles he wears make sure nothing will come of it without the blessihng of the gods. My desire dies not but I cast him in the shadows for how can I rut even in dreams with someone unable to consent.

He hears my thoughts and laugh softly, taking me by the hands and guiding me as is his due to the place where my mind and the gods' meet. This is not what I expected when I heard the word "hollowed". It's not a yawning abyss waiting to consume me. It's not an iron gate barred by chains and swords. It is a great place filled to the brim with the gods' altars. The wound is visible in the scared skies above us from where it rains a red substance looking like manna and like honey on the tongue.

I count the gods, knowing from first glance even the mythologies I've never heard of. Four from the Devas. Three from the Greeks, the Egyptians, the Norse and the Aztecs. Two from the Babylonians, the Thuatha and the Orishas. One from the Inuits, Incas, Mayas, Polynesians, Persians and Slavs. An impressive gathering with some figures I love, some I'm wary of, and some I know I risk to be a poor priest to. All powers seem to be represented here, from fire and lightning, to cold and ice, to the cold imposition of order to the joyous release of chaos. Masks of my own for me to wear, weapons to wield not in my name but in theirs, to their specifications and to their conditions.

Long and loose is my leash, gilded in gold and silver the walls of my prison, still I who knelt before none must now bear in the heart of my soul the proof of my service. Still service to higher powers, to true higher powers is its own reward, isn't it?

In this place I receive instructions, some by my guide's voice sweet as the scent of roses, some by the mouth of the graven idols in the vast temples. They tell me of vast intelligences, of beings so great and powerful they are universes of their own so as one of them is Darkness while his sister is Fertility and their kinsmans are Fire and Order. They tell me of the pantheos of these places, dreadful for humanity and more dreaded still by the gods that toppled them. Some I know like mind-twisted Cronos and sun-devouring Apep. Others I didn't know such as the ones who ruled in the place of death by which I came to this world: Bone-breaking Astovidad, pestilence-cloaked Nirriti, horrow-crowned Lords of Xilaba and their brother I knew of black-winged Thanatos.

While the walls of their prison are still holding, they are mortals who, not content of their own considerable power, kneel to these pantheons in hope to be rewarded, who command the creatures of these realms after summoning them through crack in ancient Tartarus, who would offer the world and its gods to those who wait chained in the darkness.

Worse still, they are those who dream of harnessing the power of the Titans to their own use. Those who speak without knowing what they are talking about to chain mighty Aten who burns like the sun and bleed him of power to feed a continent, to kill black-winged Thanatos and thus end the merciful release of death, to make those progenitors who decreed the first laws lend authority to their own mortal rules. Grievous is the danger to the world if they fail, perhaps more grievous is the danger to the world if they succeed in their ambitions.

My task is simple. The heroes and new gods of this world will enter in conflict with these madmen and I'm to make sure they win this fight. Creatures of legend are walking and preying on humanity, they must be destroyed or imprisoned back again. And to reinforce the gods I must bring them worshippers, to make them powers of their own right.

No sin is too grave in the pursuit of these goals say the god, no pleasure too taboo if I succeed in my task. For my own power will grow as my renown spread and Fate takes notice of me. In the end waits for me a golden throne at the side of the very gods that judge humanity after death, a place where nothing will be impossible.

Softly, coiled in darkness and protected by knights of shadows I dream of glory. And I smile in my dreams for I'm still young enough for greed and pride to trump fear and terror.