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Ascent and Descent
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Necrologer Descent
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-Father Bartholomew
1
He is troubled," the Seer said. "He feels that his sister's descent is his fault. That is why he is not currently coming to Terabithia. He's scared he won't follow the Creator's direction and keep his mind wide open."
That doesn't make sense Morgenar said telepathically from his hospital bed. He had been in a coma ever since the Necrologer, an old patient (or customer, more of a customer), had stepped almost through his skull. He had some heavy brain damage, but luckily centaurs can enter the Dead Zone1 through telepathy.
"Why doesn't that make sense, Morgenar?" the Seer questioned unemotionally. Morgenar could see the old woman's face through the Dead Zone, and it was a face so wrinkled that it was almost impossible to see those grey eyes. The Seer's face looked as if they were looking into something invisible in the middle of the cold room of the Creation Tower. Morgenar knew to the bottom of his heart that he wasn't looking at anything in the Tower at all, but at the Lych-gate2.
Now that's creepy, Morgenar decided. I'd never have a patient (customer! Or just horny virgin!) like that if she paid me millions of lucres3! Nonetheless, Morgenar kept his eyes on the Seer in case she said something. Interrupting the Seer seemed like setting someone on fire, and although they seemed to have nothing to do with each other, Morgenar said to himself that that was probably the best connection he could make. I'm delirious, Lady Renamoirr was just too crazy for me, ex-wife (ex-patient) (ex-customer!) White Witch of Charn smash my skull into a smudge, go into a coma and visiting the Dead Zone, talking to a crazy old woman that says she can tell the future (she doesn't tell the future, she gives warning from Lych-gate!), they were all worrying. Especially if all added to each other.
Well, he started, how do you know that the new Creator has started to descend? Lych-gate tells the history of Terabithia, and processes the future through what the Dead Zone goes through. The Dead Zone does not enter through the world of the Former Creator4, am I right? How can you read prophecies of the Lych-gate when they aren't even from the dead zone? Believe me, it doesn't make sense...
"Reasonable thinking," the Seer said loudly, maybe hoping for Morgenar's corpse to hear, but of course that would be impossible. The Dead Zoners could never go back to their body without a substitute to take their place, and the corpse was in a coma. Maybe it would be able to hear, but that would be an alternate self, another person that didn't have the same feelings. Maybe it would be essential for two Morgenars to hear. Nonetheless, Morgenar didn't truly care. He let the Seer continue.
"Reasonable thinking for someone unconscious for such a long time," the Seer said with a voice that made Morgenar have the feeling that he was being winked at. "I didn't suspect that someone without a physical mind would be able to communicate so successfully. You're the first person in a coma in the Dead Zone that I've contacted so successfully. I offer you a congratulations." A smile and a wink, he thought that but he knew that he didn't think that himself, it was a Dead Zone message and the Seer was contacting him telepathically as well.
You're communicating with me so greatly because you're speaking telepathically, but also broadcasting the Tower to me, so it seems I am in the room. You are speaking aloud as if I am truly there, as if you're talking to another Morgenar...
"Exactly," the Seer replied calmly. "Most people don't understand the 'Ba and Ka' concept." She transmitted another telepathic smile, which Morgenar found more annoying and slightly creepy. Ba and Ka. Sounded like something a small child would happen to say, then giggle at. That was Morgenar's first thought, but after his encounter with the Seer's telepathic smile, he didn't trust. Whether his or not, he pushed it away gently to somewhere else in the recesses of his mind. Instead, he would offer a new understanding of what the Seer said, and know it was his thought.
This 'Ba and Ka' sound familiar, Morgenar recalled, but I really don't know what you are faintly talking about. I guess ba is an alternate bawdy...(he pronounced it this way to enthuse)...and ka is...perhaps a kawpy of the mind? I am currently using my ba in this Dead Zone, and that centaur in your Tower is my ka?
Again, that creepy smile that Morgenar was starting to hate to the bottom of his heart bounced inside of his head until he banished it to memory at the back of his mind. The creepy smile that seemed to forewarn messages from the Seer. Why did Leslie create some strange peoples? Like the giant Janisavery, the kindly yet quite violent giant that once was a Palace Guard? And before the Seer could transmit another message to him, using the smile as a messenger, Morgenar said quickly, What happened? I don't understand how the RTP (Royal Terabithian Palace) could fall to- How did we fall? How did we-
"You are quite right about the ba and ka concept," the Seer said loudly, ignoring Morgenar (until later, he heard a thought) completely. "Right about the concept, but wrong about who you are. You see, the original, broken by his workaholic and promiscuous nature, Morgenar ae Slairmuũs5 the Original was attacked by one of his sex partners, a witch he met in another land, now a Necrologer."
And I'm a different person? Morgenar asked, and suddenly noticed that at the same time that he had spoken, his other self, his ka, had said, "And I'm a different person?" aloud, for anyone and everything in the Tower to see. And the Dead Zone, let's not forget the Dead Zone. The Seer had broadcasted the image of the ka speaking on its own accord, the same thing that he himself had spoken.
Why did he do that?! Morgenar said, alarmed. Why did that...ka do that?!
"Don't go sounding so prejudicial now," the Seer said impatiently. "Morgenar, you don't even know that that unconscious body is not a ka!" Another smile, instead of starting to creep him out, Morgenar found it incredibly annoying. "That Morgenar isn't a ka!"
That's what the Morgenar in the Dead Zone found most surprising and stunning.
I don't understand, he said slowly a bit after what the Seer said. He wasn't actually surprised that he felt a prejudice towards his other self, nor wondering how the Seer knew his Secret Name, but knowing that the unconscious Morgenar wasn't the ka, not even the ba, either. He was the ka, he was the "kawpy," he was-
"Well," both of the Morgenars said, the ka in the Dead Zone and the original, "if neither of us are the ba, where's that Morgie? Where's the manikin Morgenar?" With that, Morgenar the ka was confident that he would receive a smile for accomplishing what the Seer was obviously holding until they understood.
Still, the ka said. We don't know how the RTP fell. And why I-
"I know where the ba Morgenar is," the Seer suddenly announced out of the blue. She transmitted a larger image of the Tower to the ka Morgenar and he realized that the Original had awoken from his coma. He had been talking at the same time as the ka had, like one body. They were, in fact, one body, just a part missing.
"Where, Prophet?" they said aloud, in the Tower and the Dead Zone. "O, Prophet, where is the manikin, the ba, the last Morgenar?" They didn't realize that they were saying this, but they knew that the other did, or maybe they both together produced it. Both knew that they wouldn't naturally say this on their own, and their sudden minute long reunion had brought it. They spoke as on person, a body with skins and bones, and a spirit that brought life to that partial body, but they still needed their ba, their finished body, then they would be as powerful as a body with a soul, as powerful as the Seer, or the Creator herself...
"The Witch has him," the Seer sputtered suddenly, and the ka Morgenar didn't need a transmission in order to hear her. The Seer was transmitting her Voice, all over Terabithia, but that might be bad, Morgenar the ka thought. The Witch might hear, and-
The Snow Queen, the Snow Witch, the White Witch, Queen of Whites, she had the ba, and was employing it to find the rest. "She understands that if the Original, the ba and the ka unite-"
They are as powerful as the Original and ka. And once she has that-
"She'll have control-"
Of all of
"Terabithia and its-"
People and souls.
And with an audible snap, the Seer screamed as she looked out the window, fell backwards with some strange feeling as if she was dead. The telepathic connection suddenly shattered simply with the Seer's descent. The ka Morgenar could feel one last message before he lost contact with Terabithia and fell into the void of the Dead Zone: "Tell all the ka who they are! Don't let them join the Queen! DO NOT LET THEM JOIN BA! THE WITCH HAS-"
2
"Creator-go-to-hell," the original Morgenar swore aloud. "Oh, love-o'-the-Dead, what do I do now?" He stood up with a start and looked at the downed Seer. Downed, the Seer isn't a hell-gone bird, and she's not alive, oh Creator, oh, where for the love-o'-the-
A horrific, excited shout awoke him from his sudden panic. It was the kind of sound that you never heard if you were a person hiding from the attack, from the Queen. But Morgenar wasn't that kind of person. Most Terabithians he met said that promiscuous centaurs were the most cowardly you could find in any place, but Morgenar was living proof that that was Deadshit. Most of the Palace Guards that didn't know of his promiscuity elected him the Warrior title, an enormous temporary rank that went to the bravest soldier of that year. After the last battle of Narnia, and Morgenar had come to Terabithia, Morgenar had received this title.
But anyone with even this title would be terrified.
Instead of calming his panic and paranoia, it just got him going into what he called "Emergency Mode." Suddenly, he stopped muttering in nervousness and progressed almost slowly to the window, just to confirm if his worries were true. Most of the time they were, but lately he was forgetting things (do I have the Old Timer's disease or something? He wondered. Lady Leslie had told her about Old Timer's herself) and he couldn't be sure if he imagined that or if something else frightened (and possibly killed, but let's be optimistic) the Seer. As he progressed, he could hear more terrifying, excited shouts getting closer and closer. Paranoia seized him when he got to the window, and he thought about that book that Lady Leslie had brought him. ("Read it," she had said gently, and he did read it. I'm a Creator-loved man, I won't go Beyond (the Dead Zone), going Beyond would be silly). The book, it had been about humans, and they went to a hotel (a house where humans stay during their vacations, Lady Leslie had explained) and their son sensed ghosts, and the dad became evil...
He could feel the terror that he felt while reading that Human Book creep up on him as he slowly looked out towards the window. He suddenly found himself thinking of his ka, his ka in the Dead Zone (I bet all the ka live there, he thought), his ka that strengthened him, and he strengthened the ka. That had all disappeared when something killed the Seer (let's be optimistic, frightened her into unconsciousness) and with that was all his courage. Maybe promiscuous centaurs are cowards, he thought, but that was Deadshit, he also convinced himself. Deadshit, "DEE-EE-AE-DEE-ESS-AECH-AYE-TEE!!!"
"Deadshit?" the terrifying excited voice said in almost pleasure. "How offensive, since when have we come out of anyone's ass?" And a dead human suddenly made himself known to Morgenar by climbing the rest of the wall and appearing at the window, the one that the Witch had told to kill him. The zombie turned around and shouted, "It's him, the slimy slut that the Seeing Woman managed to escape with, they're in here in this Seeing Tower!" He turned around again, to face Morgenar. He grinned a blood-stained teeth smile. His eyes were so bloodshot that reds had replaced the whites, one of his nostrils had been sliced in half, and there were hollow spots in his cheeks. He let the frozen, scared to the bone Morgenar survey him, then said, "Thought you could escape, dincha? Thought you could escape from her Majesty the Necrologer, dincha? You slimy slut, her Majesty the Necrologer's told us all about you, about the way you-"
When the zombie called him a slimy slut, then anger had suddenly awoken him from his fear of Death. Morgenar, having had retreated from the window when the creature had arrived, had begun to walk slowly towards the creature and when he got to the part about the events between him and her in Narnia, he had lost his patience. Putting all his power into his hooves, he kicked the zombie out of the window, onto the oncoming army of the dead. As he watched the army coming, Morgenar rapidly structured a plan and took some deep breaths.
Some zombies were already climbing the walls of the tower. The one that he just killed (can't be killed, he reminded himself. The thing's gonna try its best to kill me now that I've broken all of his bones and managed to get him impaled by all the erect spears) was a quick little bugger, most of the rest were still having trouble with the second floor walls, and he was on the top of the floor (what is that, ten floors?). He quickly figured out some math. It's been about ten minutes, he reasoned, since the Seer fell dead (fell unconscious), if they all started at the same time at that point, and it's takes five minutes to climb each floor, I have an hour on my hands if they don't manage to shatter the window shields on lower floors and don't find the door. If it takes twenty minutes to climb the Tower from the inside, and they shatter the window from the first floor, I will have twenty five minutes to get out. If they find the door...he shuddered. Then I have less than five minutes.
And now that he thought about it, he remembered something, The Immortals are some of the most powerful beings in any world. No one can kill them, because of their great power. Who said that, the propagandist Father Bartholomew? The Church Pope? Morgenar quickly dismissed this and realized that, having lived through all of Narnia, the Witch was an Immortal, and this was, after all, her army. If she was here, then...the last is the most likely, he decided, so if he was going to come up with a better plan, it would have to be now.
He started pacing slowly across the floor, trying to think, because if he didn't have at least five minutes, he would need a different plan. The Seer, her dead husband was the Alchemyst, the Alchemist, alchemists make fake people, fake humans, fake bas, fake homunculi, fake human bawdy (body) parts, fake strange human parts, fake angel parts, fake wings. The Seer's husband, N. Flamel the Alchemist, there was a picture (a tapestry, more like) of him on the wall, an ancient man. What had the Seer told him in his coma before she managed to contact his ka? "Nicolas, he died a pitiful death, he forgot to drink his Eternal Solution potion and died of old age." No, that didn't matter. "He was six hundred forty three years old." No! That didn't matter either! "His office is still in tact, upstairs." That isn't- wait, that can be important.
He crossed the room in a hurry, realizing he had spent the first minute just thinking about the Seer's alchemist husband. That doesn't matter, he reminded himself. What matters is I need to find protection, I need somewhere safe to think, but possibly so casual that Jadis would expect me to go...somewhere safe than this Tower, which was penetrated by an Immortal...
He'd have to think later. He had wasted another precious minute at the bottom of the stairs, thinking about what he would do. The important thing is getting away, without Jadis knowing I am gone, I can't let her get to me, she wants something with me, she wants me probably because of that accident, she wants to kill me... That awoke him into a gallop up the stairs as fast as he could. It was rather difficult with horse legs to go up the stairs, but in danger, any animal or human can do nearly impossible things. He went up the stairs, which were slightly short, and spent about thirty seconds climbing the stairs into the attic room that the Seer had called, "an Office."
It was a dark enclosed area with no windows, but something like a trapdoor above his head, which he supposed would lead to some form of escape; but if it didn't then he knew he would be Deadshit. I'm not Deadshit, he reminded himself. I'm not Deadshit, I'm not Deadshit, "I'm not Deadshit," he made that decision immediately as he wandered into the room, looking for the things he was looking for. If the Witch can't see me high in the sky, then I won't get hurt, he decided. I can't let her read my mind, know what I'm planning...
He looked towards a cabinet that was marked:
Body Parts
in a very crude writing, with some pictures among the words, like creepy red eyes that seemed to jump out at Morgenar, and there was even a hand that seemed to be rotting, but when the centaur touched it, seemed to be a beautiful woman's hand that was still alive and simply sticking out of the cabinet. There was no knob for him to take to open the cabinet, and he realized that he was use the hand. He remembered a long time ago: His teacher, an Alchemyst as well, had told them about alchemy.
"They believe that intruders must be punished, and they use very subtle ways," the Teacher had said out right, and it still puzzled him to know why the Teacher referred to alchemists like himself as "them." But that didn't matter, especially now, the Witch was after him, and he didn't know why, but having a diabolical destructive demon (you're going insane, Morgie) after you can't be good at all.
So, when he walked over and inserted his arm into the hand, he wasn't surprised when it clenched it tight, but he gasped sharply. The eye seemed to zoom in on him, and a mouth suddenly appeared and said in a feminine, kind but sharp voice, "If you're a thief, then my arm will strangle you. What do you want here, Morgenar Slairmuus?"
"I...I must get out of here!" he burst out in a panic, in no mood or terror to be messing around with this talking cabinet. "This, this woman, a witch, she's after me, and I think it's because-"
"I know, I know," the cabinet replied, and silently opened. Inside, Morgenar realized he knew what he was looking for, but he found many miracles besides. He reached his left arm into the small, narrow opening, put it into the opening towards the wings he needed, when the cabinet suddenly shut on his arm and he cried out in pain. "I will get the Angel's Marks, if you please!" the cabinet said in an almost angry tone. As it allowed his arm out of the opening, Morgenar could see a bloody hand reach for the wings.
"Good luck," the cabinet said.
Endnotes:
Father Bartholomew is the Pope of the Church of Life, Terabithia's main church established at first by Jesse Aarons Jr. and later taken by the Creator, LezLee. Father Bartholomew before inheriting the title of the Pope of the Church of Life, was a soldier in the Creator's Army. Being called a mascot, he would encourage his fellow soldiers onto war by writing poems like this.
1An area of Terabithia that few people can enter physically, not to mention mentally, and contact the living and dead while they are unable to in normal regions of Terabithia.
2The entry of the Dead Zone, where the future is inscribed.
3The Terabithian currency, established in 974 BSM.
4Information about this Creator, called "God," are currently available at the Mabinogion library in Dooblin.
5Interpreted into "Son" which is "slairre" in the Language, and when "muus" is attached to the end of the word, it generally means "many," making the word plural. Morgenar's surname and private Secret Name means "Many Sons."