CANAAN DESCENDING (PART FOUR)

Days passed, far too many to keep track of and I became haunted and bereft with the stress of this reality and the other during the course of our travels. I succumbed to my dislocation and fell to my knees in the hot desert sand and screamed up towards the contused sun clutching at the keys on my gauntlet as though they were my albatross or the ball and chain of these angry twin world prisons.

Ember sank beside me and offered one of the last Oneiroion blooms, but I couldn’t eat. I held it in the palm of my hand and looked into the bulb as if the answer lay within its petals. I just kept saying over and over again that I wanted to go home, but they wouldn’t let me give up.

Ember kept saying, “We’re nearly there, Architect, we’re nearly there.”

Her eyes were green as moss over the surface of a pond.

They allowed me some time to collect myself, my brooding needing the chance to cool in Cloak’s shade. I felt so used up, all endurance waning, my body channeling all that energy burnt out in desperate need of a recharge. Lightning thrived in the clouds above us comparing tensions, igniting the sky in violet and blue, and in the distance the clouds flanked the horizon in dense blockades of suppressed pain. I groaned as I sprawled out on the hard surface. Cloak stood nearby, his long coat flailing like great seraph wings, allowing the flaring garment to sweep over my body like a blanket as the desert wind turned cold and moaned its despairing cries for the true night that would never come.

I had closed my eyes only for a moment before I realized I was clambering to my feet, shoving bulbs of Oneiroion into my mouth, Ember licking the juices of the fruit off her fingers. Cloak remained where he had been before, stoically holding watch, his shrouded face held towards the southern expanse we had come from, as if wary that something might have followed us.

We clambered to our feet and began the journey again, and though I walked beside them, I was still trying to come to grips with all of this. My destiny, my exile, my life. My reality had bled into the dream and become a reality itself. The sorrow for how I had treated Mother, my rage against THE BASTARD, the destruction of Lamia and the Omphalos, all of it came rushing at me, taunting me.

There are things in me that are so tainted, so poisoned and violent, and I’ve been expressing them so freely these days I don’t even recognize myself. Maybe it was Lamia’s manipulation of me, her placing things in me to distort me into a grim mirror of what her real self had been. I can’t seem to make any head way with any of this. Even after everything, the more I think I understand, the more convoluted it all gets and I’m lost again, roaming corridors and ruins and deserts trying to find absolution that denies me. I have the power, I know that now. I have the Threads, I have my freedom from THE BASTARD and my neglectful Mother, but it doesn’t erase it all, doesn’t dry it all up and set me down upon a gilded throne where I can rule happily.

I still keep trying to understand how any of this has anything to do with me.

What if I can’t save this world?

What if I can’t save myself?

But there’s no escaping it all is there?

It makes the journey harder, even as far as I’ve come. It makes it all so hard.

There’s so much to be afraid of. But mostly I am afraid of myself. These small displays of power have proven that I am far from ready to wield what is mine. Even soul intact, I am profoundly incomplete.

The change is coming I can never go back…

Maybe Lamia’s right. I am the Nourisher of Wounds. I don’t need to be made into it to know what I already am. Hell, maybe all messiahs are torn these ways.

I shambled up to Cloak, saying nothing, just wanting to be close to someone, something. Ember slipped her hand into mine and skipped along, attempting to coerce me to join her - as if we were skipping along the Yellow Brick Road. I wished I had her optimism.

And then one day, the rain stopped falling and an answer dawned. It may not have been the one I was looking for, but no one could deny that there dwelt a renewal of hope.

Ahead of us grew a vast, daunting network of overpasses, an entwining nest of steel and stone girders, far more industrial and myriad than the ancient city that lay in the desert fog far behind us.

We had lumbered across this apocalyptic Road Warrior desert only to arrive at a volatile juncture.

And yet, the nearness of the Citadel sparked a change in the Threads. Light emanated from its myriad plates like a beacon and as I stared up beyond the tangled nest of pathways, I realized how ominously similar it and the Citadel it is, both in majesty and intricacy. The only true difference dwells in the Citadel’s mirrored surfaces are cold and black.

It soared, tyrannous with no end and no beginning, a cosmic collage of black glass, bleak and gothic in its alien architecture. It rested regally despite its apparent ruin - fractures running up and down in a multitude of stained glass fractures upon a nesting network of warped overpasses at the high and threatening meeting of the lines. I can compare it to nothing in the world I know, for it is truly as nothing I have ever seen. The tips of each of the many parapets are lost under the oppressive gloom of the ailing clouds. A massive incandescent creature lording over the corpse-laden desert. A shining black beacon, true, but one intended to inflict trepidation to the viewer. Each fractured frame of glass were like eyes staring out, watching the world from all sides, but unseen till this moment. Only it seemed so sad, so alone in the desert wastes once thronged by countless rivers, valleys, forests, and a mighty sea. A forgotten monument of a past that grew out of its memory. Unredeemed. Unsung except by little girls in masquerade masks and walking shadows.

I hesitated to follow after my companions who strode forth with a greater ambition than my own. As we made our way up this winding maze, emaciated rats cringed by on their weak little rat feet. They stopped to look up at us, their sunken eyes, their wriggly noses examining our sun beaten faces, as if to question why we had stolen into their kingdom, and if we had anything to eat. Ember plucked the petals from her Oneiroion blooms, and scattered them along the path behind us like a flower girl at a wedding. The rats instinctively summoned their strength and lurched toward these, greedily, feasting on what my blood had sown.

Rhada Khar nudged me forward and I continued up the metal and stone chaos spiraling and stair stepping, suspended over the desert in an M.C. Escher nightmare. The rafters and girders were constructed like a trail of thought gone very awry, very quickly. There was a disturbing splendor about it, but my companions were not as impressed as I was. This was what it had always been to them. But what of before, when the walls weren’t breached and the glass cracked? Had they looked upon it with the awe that I gazed upon its ruin?

Little Ember sauntered up the paths enthused with miniature ballets in every step. She told us stories as we walked, but I can’t remember their exact telling now. They were filled with her poppy buds of laughter and colorful images of the rainbow fields the Architect before me had made for her, and something to do with a waterfall who believed it was an avalanche. It was all silly and childish, but it passed the time.

Along the girders huddled the chalky remains of several Revenants, dried out from the heat, their blades sliding from tired fingers, lumped to one side like animals killed by cars. They did not bother us, but I pitied them. They lifted pale shrunken faces, their eyes cataracts of pus crusting over their sockets, leaving them blind. It was obvious they had made many failed attempts to enter the Citadel, and despite the bloody handprints smeared on the glass, they were forcibly rejected.

“Are you able to recall anything this close to your home?” Cloak said following my eyes up the dark tower.

“I…I don’t remember…anything.”

His words became distant murmurs, lost in the swirl of the wind and machines whining somewhere dark and deep. I imagined a mechanical deity existing in the dark, forced underground by its own creations, suffering and slowly going mad, just waiting to lift its ghastly hand through the crust of the earth to wrap me up and squeeze me like a grape between its mangling fingers. My vision warped and we moved closer to the top of the demented staircases. The light of the gauntlet shone brighter than the haze of light straining under the dense black clouds above us.

So many mirrors…

I paused beside the Rhylian, both of us staring up the length of the Citadel; the height immense as its spires rose to puncture the sky, a fortified bastion of glass and steel.

“I’ve never been this close before,” Rhada Khar admitted mostly to himself. “She doesn’t shine the way she used to.”

The sweeping winds drew my eyes down coils of sandy drafts to the bottom of the Citadel, where I expected to find a grand entryway standing in wait, but as we drew closer there was no doorway, no great gates preceding our entrance to the wasteland’s towering warden. While tall and soaring, I realized the tower itself extended through the surface of the earth, driven deep, leaving it half buried.

Cloak stopped ahead of me and Ember, the hem of his dark coat flailing, dust snaking around him. The bellows of the machines rose with a deafening tremble, shaking the ground under us. Ember wrapped her arm around mine and pressed her face into my sleeve.

I asked her why she came back to join us after Icarus Canto had rescued her, and her painted smile seemed to spread wider.

“I wanted to see you make it, to know that this world won’t always be like this. I know you can’t see it now, but you are going to find your way. Believe me.” She squeezed my arm tight staying close.

Cloak beckoned. I met him in front of a pane of icy black glass, my companions reflections uncannily clear and visible, while mine remained lost and unseen.

My dark guardian placed a firm hand against the glass and sighed, “It has been sometime since I have been within my master’s home. Truly this is as much my homecoming as it is yours. How I long to venture to the many libraries, to walk the grand halls, as not a shade, but as the Theurgian I am.”

I listened, but my eyes were fixated on the lack of my own reflection.

“Many have tried, but none have been permitted beyond these walls since the fall. At least I had thought as much until a little girl found me in the desert wearing a sacred relic I thought lost.”

He directed his attention to Ember who touched the side of her mask, her eyes a shimmering cat-like yellow. She giggled lightly.

Cloak continued: “These pathways were twisted and reconstructed by the Revenants who sought to breach the walls, but the true entrance is now buried under the ground.”

Cloak reached into the folds of his black coat and claimed a black box covered in silver markings. It seemed insignificant, but Cloak offered it to me.

“It was not only power I obtained in the halls of the Black Gallery. This cube is a potent relic, a Gambit’s Doorway.”

I held the cube in both of my hands, examining its lacquered surface. I traced my gloved fingers over the markings, the gauntlet responding with a pleasant tingling of bells.

“What does it do?”

Cloak stood back and opened his coat, revealing a swirling vortex of lightning churning under the folds.

“It was intended as a failsafe by my brethren, but we soon discovered there were those among us who wished to use our inventions for selfish purposes. The benevolent of us destroyed the Doorways to prevent them from falling into idle hands. All save one. When Illmatar fell, I knew the Citadel would be next. To ensure the plague and the Trespasser would not gain entrance to the Summit, I invoked the power of the Doorway to conceal the entrance and hid it within the mechanism. It will only open at your behest.”

“What do I do,” I asked rolling the box over in my hand like a Rubik’s cube.

“An Architect’s blood. The vision of the world, remember?”

I understood. I took the sharpened metal fingers of my gauntlet and opened a cut along the underside of my right arm. Before the wound could mend I quickly brought the box under the stream of pearly blood trickling down my arm. The markings lit up like the digital face of a clock and the box leapt out of my fingers and rolled on the ground pushing up against the pane of glass.

It began to spin like a dreidel and the top and side corners opened up like small angular mouths. The doorway constructed itself through the glass, manifesting on the side of the black Citadel wall. The magic of the Gambit’s Doorway erected the entrance replete with an ornate archway of carved angel’s wings.

But it was not complete.

A perfect circle was carved out of the glass.

Instinctively I lifted my hand to my neck curling my fingers around the magician’s eyeglass dangling against my chest. Without a second thought I ripped the chain from my neck and held the glass at the edges between my index finger and thumb. Through the shard I saw myself reflected onto the black mirror doorway.

I stood as I am, a nondescript, average teenager who could slip into a crowd, get lost and no one would know I was ever there. Unremarkably ordinary.

I turned to Cloak enclosing the shard in my fist. “The magician said that he saw nothing when he looked at Baphomet, but all I see when I look…Is me.”

“The glass sees truth and truth is creation. It sees what we want to see. See yourself, not as you are, as you’ve been, but who you will become.”

I took the eyeglass and I turned to face the black doorway.

“Show me the real me,” I whispered into the black glass, my breath fogging the sleek surface. “Let me be a good person, please. I’m a good person.”

“Good. Evil. In the end it is all the same thing. Light and shadow. It is in between where the truth lies. You must see through the illusion. See through the lie.”

Shadows and mirrors…

I took a deep breath and pushed the shard of glass into the opening. It fit perfectly in place with a responsive click.

I stood back and watched my reflection waver into view as though I were walking through a dense black fog. I emerged fully formed, captivated and stunned by my new materialization. I was no longer just Canaan Quintanilla anymore. His face did not look back at me. His hand did not reach up to touch the glass as the Sigil of Truth drew itself in lines of light.

It was the Architect staring back at me, earth and glass, steel and flesh. Light and dark.

I felt my legs shake watching the reflection turn from the demigod I’d become into a child, curly-haired, innocent and then remolded back into my earthly incarnation, the me writing my secrets into the final pages of this book. I was all of these things now. They were all a part of me now.

But the reflections didn’t hold. Suddenly, the mirror bled like an exposed Polaroid, and a new reflection emerged. Then another and another; a multitude of images each bearing my face, too numerous to keep track of like the monstrosities in the desert.

It became too much. I couldn’t focus. I thought I might go blind in the face of myself. I rang my fists against the glass screaming at my ever shifting reflection. It wouldn’t stop long enough for me to focus on one single image. I wanted it to stop, willfully so, but my likeness flashed in and out of recognition faster and faster, reconstructing itself over and over. I struggled to control it the way it was trying to command fire from out of nothing.

I fell backwards, scurrying away from the glass entrance. The mirrored surface swirled with storm clouds over dark water. Eerie green phosphorescence bled into the rising clouds and spread out like industrial plumes of smoke. I watched crazed and shaking, drawn into a reflection of madness as the brutal face of Simu’la Re burst through the jet black sea, staring into my very soul. His face was a hideously deformed caricature of my own, a despicable double with a sniveling smile on festered lips.

It’s not me. I know that for sure. It can’t be me.

“I…I can’t stand this!”

Without warning a bright silver flame sparked from the ends of my armored fingertips and the tattoos on my body glowed in response to the spark. The fire didn’t burn me; it enclosed around my hand, an emblazoned outline of rich, warm light. I held my hand before the glass which reflected my blazing physical effigy in a blurry haze, mesmerizing and powerful. Simu’la Re smiled, his lips an open cut teeming with maggots and blood. I made my hand into a fiery fist and plunged it deep into the black glass. Silver fire consumed the Sigil of Truth and Simu’la Re’s face melted into a pane of despair. Ripples of light shot out from the blast, cracking the doorway and shattering the carved angel wings.

The length of glass lit up like the face of a skyscraper at night, powering on in a roar of illumination. The Citadel moaned answering my call from a long forgotten slumber. I could feel it awakening under my fingertips, welcoming me. I could hear life emerging beyond the glass, roused by the energies flowing through fractured black mirrors.

I twisted my arm in the doorway like a key, causing the black mirror to rupture, silver flames reacting and waving out in a cataclysmic overload. My hand fixed to the glass as if it were going to open a portal and suck me through, a magnetic pull siphoning at the ends of my fingers. The black glass funneled inwards momentarily before boomeranging back towards me shattering the pane of my obscured reflections into thousand of glittering slivers.

The shockwave of glass rocked me off my feet and I toppled to the ground at Cloak’s airy feet. His purple aura was strong again, his power emanating in waves of joy and praise.

“Do you know though perverse under the laws of the Devourer, Lamia’s ways held one vital truth?” Cloak whispered into my ear, his invisible lips kissing the side of my face, his hand twisting under my arm to lift me up. “Suffering is the Harbinger of Resurrection.”

When I stood, he withdrew with a windy swoosh and I stood face to face with a dark, stygian gulf. Black glass rained down inside the opening, and Cloak stepped forward examining the opening with a nervous musing. The closest thing he might have ever come to laughing. The mechanical frenzy deep below the earth erupted with a furious howl.

“Even now you must realize there is no way back. Those roads have dispersed and you have new realms to venture. Descend, Canaan Quintanilla…Descend and embrace Their blessings…The Divine Devourer Demands It…”

I knelt down and gathered several shards of black glass into my hands. A piece of one was a half moon split from the magician’s eyeglass. I clutched it in my human fist until it bit into my palm and my regenerating flesh grew back over it.

“From the moment I woke up in this nightmare I’ve been told who I am and what I’m meant to do. No one asked me. No one gave me the opportunity to remember the past they say I should, or give me enough time to accept it with my whole heart and an open mind. But I’m here now, Cloak. I took the Threads on my own and I stand here looking at my reflection seeing the powerful being I’ve become and I know with all my heart I can become even more. But you can’t make these decisions for me anymore. It is my choice now whether to walk through the door, hesitate or runaway. Be my guardian. Tell me who I was, but let it be my choice. Let me be who I am.”

He stared at me, the lightning in his eyes narrowed into a single pulsation. He turned preparing to enter the cracked doorway, the air singing beyond; sirens aloft their rocky thrones.

“Whenever you are ready, young Architect. I’ll await you on the other side. Make your journey well…”

He said nothing more and I watched him walk downward into the gloom, into the steep depths of the tower.

He disappeared, leaving me alone with Ember and Rhada Khar.

The winds swirled dust and bits of glass into my eyes, compelling me to the opening. The Citadel called, and though I hesitated, I knew I would have to crawl forward.

But why do I have to?

“It is such a burden you bear, but what are we without conflict.” Rhada Khar said stepping through the entrance, his senses alive with new scents permeating through the doorway. “The beautiful thing about destruction, you can always rebuild.”

When he had passed into the darkness, I looked back over my shoulder, but The Broken City seemed so far away.

“Lower…Lower…Lower still,” Ember said tucking an Oneiroion bloom into the palm of my hand. She danced, her glass moths shimmering and white, swallowed in the darkness.

It isn’t real. No matter what happens…

It isn’t real.

I took a step just inside the doorway, letting the dark nuzzle at my form. I could see a glass staircase unfolding under my feet. I clutched the outside of the portal, wanting to turn back, but there’s nothing to go back for. I took a deep breath, and I surrendered myself to a new door; a new opportunity…

Is this a beginning or an ending? Not much room left to write, Virgil. Your pages are full, and I’m so tired.

A change is coming and I can never go back.

I do not claim to know what my future holds beyond the doorway. In the real world, the world as I have come to know it, I exist as a mundane teenager, potentially a mental case, but in Nous I am the potential savior of a dying world, the avatar of a creative, benevolent power. Both have their destinies contrary to one another as they might be, but in the end I am still me. I am both Canaan and Baphomet. I am I. Even if I must go it on my own.

The world before me and no idea where to go.

Teresa was right afterall.

I see the split in the road.

I see my face in the mirror.

I feel like giving up.

I feel like I need to scream and pinch myself to wake up only to cry myself to sleep all over again. These dreams won’t last forever, but they aren’t dreams at all anymore. Maybe I am a savior, a hero. Maybe I am a madman.

I don’t know.

Still, I am reborn. I am one. But not yet finished. Not yet complete.

All I do know is that a new day is beginning to dawn outside my window and as the sun crests the clouds I feel a little tense. Maybe there is no other choice for me. No other solace than the sanctum of my Citadel of Fractured Mirrors. My endless, precious void.

I am descending, God help me. It feels like I’m falling. I am descending, grasping for the tyrannous stars. I can’t say with complete certainty I’m going to like how it all ends. But I know, whatever the future holds, it’s the perfect place to start.

End of Volume Two

The Journals of Canaan Quintanilla Will Continue…

CANAAN DESCENDING (PART THREE)

I sat alone away from the others that night. We could only tell the divide between night and day based on the change in the air. The days were long and stifling with the heat, while night fell with a decrease in temperature, unseasonably cold.

I perched myself on a hill looking off into the distance at the walking dead; what few remained of them. I cleaned the blood off my gauntlet with an old rag Ember had stuffed at the bottom of her basket. I felt remorse at staining the armor, but it did not dull the gleam or power continuously radiating through the metal and glass. I tried to remove it, but I felt my skin pull with it and stopped fearful I’d have to rip the armament completely off my bone.

It was mine and has no intention of leaving me anytime soon.

I have to wonder though why it does not manifest in the other world. The scar Breeze left behind remained visible, but neither the mask nor the gauntlet transported to the otherside. Cloak warned I would be without my powers there, but I could open doorways and as he confessed, would no longer require dreams to come and go.

We journeyed on with Rhada Khar. The Rhylian did not speak much and made Little Ember uneasy. She kept to the opposite side of Cloak a great deal of the time, as I had shown my ugly side once too often. Besides, it was Baphomet she knew and admired, not me. I was just the guy with his face.

I slept very little and woke groggily to find Rhada Khar standing over me, arms crossed, watching me avidly.

“You were watching me?”

“Rhylians need little sleep.”

“Well, don’t. I don’t like it.”

“The others are concerned for you.” Rhada Khar said settling into the sand next to me, uninvited and unarmed.

“They have nothing to be concerned about.”

“You are important. It would ease their minds to know you care to be near them.”

“Did anyone ask you?” I snapped. “Why do you care anyway? Shouldn’t you be trying to kill me?”

He stared forward unflinching, but I knew I insulted him.

“You’re angry with me?”

“To say the least.”

Rhada Khar turned away from me, ashamed. “I do not pretend I am innocent. I did not believe you to be the One. I shame my father for my lack of faith. But if you demand greater punishment, I will not stop you. I will honor your deathblow if you will it.”

I didn’t want to kill him, just as Baphomet didn’t kill him in the Omphalos temple.

“Look, I’m sorry if I wounded your honor or whatever. It’s just it’s all a bit much right now. I’ve been through so much the past few days; I haven’t had much time to think about anything but trying to figure out how any of this happened to me, and why I’m the one who has to fix it. I know you fought with Cloak and Ember, but I am in no rush to trust you. You’re here, that’s great, but don’t think I’ve forgotten that you were an agent of the Lamia.”

“It was not her orders alone I was forced to fulfill.”

“Forced? By who? Baru?”

“The Alchemist is persuasive.”

I understood then. He wasn’t completely under their sway, just another pawn; another puppet dancing to the devil’s fiddle.

“What did he promise you?” I asked sitting up.

“Among my brethren, we call it ma’ii-kaanenh, but you would know this as brother.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Why? Totemo Khar lives.”

“How can you know that? Baru is a monster and a liar.”

Rhada Khar placed a heavy paw against his chest. “My heart remains whole. If he were beyond this world, I would know.”

The Rhylian warrior rested on the back of his legs and raised his head toward the sky like a wolf. He opened his mouth and produced a long howl that somehow transitioned into a beautiful lament. I had not anticipated such melody to escape the fearsome mouth of this tank of a beast, but the notes filled the haunted air, sending his song and heart across the broken universe.

When he finished, he lowered his head and withdrew the warhammer at his back, laying it in his lap.

“I know you do not trust me, but my hammer is yours should you have need. I do not assume to know what awaits us in the Citadel, should we reach it, but I would not have you venture its halls alone.”

He faced me earnestly, his stern features softening in the harsh light. Though he would never admit it, being a noble and proud creature, I could tell that he too was as lost as me. He needed a rejuvenated reason to fight.

We found the terrain unforgiving as we continued on. Our wandering led us to the farthest reaches of Nous and into the sea itself. Walking the dried up ocean floor was a major undertaking and we were met with various areas that required a great deal of alacrity. Climbing into the valley of an abyssal plain and routing our way up was no easy feat. Fortunately the same skill Baphomet inherited from the Craft was passed down to me. I moved with a clumsy elegance, but managed with claw and foot to ease up and over a series of submarine ridges.

Cloak, who could to some extent fly, did not use his abilities which I found rather odd and instead remained solid and corporeal moving up the sloping landscape like an amateur mountaineer. He looked silly trying to manipulate his limbs, an ancient spider trying to find his way up into his web. Rhada Khar moved as I did with Ember secured to his back.

I became apprehensive as we climbed the hill. Strange figures rose on the horizon, indiscernible at our distance, but wide, mountainous shapes rising toward the sky. Edging closer to the top of the hill we found ourselves overlooking a grim display.

Far ahead the husks of massive vessels sat sun scorched in the desert like skeletons in an elephant graveyard. Some were pitched on the ends of their hulls, or overturned like whales belly up. I pictured their crews trapped inside, long dead of course, but still waiting to be salvaged from their unfortunate tombs and properly buried. A disturbing thought, that anyone would want to be buried in such a perilous place Nous had so obviously become.

“The Armada of Kasteel,” Cloak said standing at the peak of the hill, his hood cutting low across his mask. “They were the ocean guardians of the Citadel. These mighty vessels mounted a defensive wall to bar the Trespasser’s path, only to find the waters that had been their livelihood were now their enemy.”

“So much death, Cloak. How can I redeem so many souls?”

“The brave require no redemption,” the Rhylian spoke appearing over my shoulder. “They seek only remembrance.”

A valiant sentiment, but gravity continued pushing down on my shoulders.

“Come on,” Cloak said, exasperated. I could feel the heat of his breath rasp on the back of my neck. “We make camp and rest ourselves.”

***

The winds were cold and shrill, a stormy sea breeze sweeping in finding no tide to roll along. Ember sat tediously trying to start a fire to keep us warm. She held the Spark Wood in both hands speaking to the dormant spirit of fire, but with each spark the wild wind descended to snuff it out.

She must have felt my eyes watching her because she looked up, her hair slashing across her mask. “You could speak to the fire too, you know?” She said tossing the block of wood into my hands.

I held the Spark Wood and studied its mystical engravings. “I’m not sure I know what to do.”

She sighed and shook her head. “I showed you before Baphomet, don’t you…?”

She cut herself off and clamped a hand over her painted mouth.

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to…”

She shivered and I could hear a light sob pass through her lips behind the mask.

“It’s okay,” I told her pulling her close. “I miss him too.”

“But you are him. I know that.”

“No worries, little one. I’m still getting used to it all myself. Now come on, show me how this works. Again.”

I concentrated on the piece of wood in my hands, speaking to the air, asking the fire to come into me. I drew in steady breaths, releasing them slowly.

“Good, very good,” Ember observed. “Just like that. Don’t be afraid. Fire keeps us warm, cooks our food. Gives us light in the darkness.”

I focused on the words warm and light. They became heat and blaze and I could feel a tingling in my fingers and in the air around me. I could feel the air gathering, the velocity of its gales sensual and effervescent. The wood in my hand crackled and flickered, humming in the net of my fingers. It gravitated towards me, currents of energy flocking to me and I was no longer speaking to the latent flame, but to elements far and wide. The earth responded with a low grumble and the air with a delicious sigh, and even the sweat tearing from my pores under strain and warmth ran across my skin like raindrops pelting down.

“You’re doing it!” I heard Ember exclaim.

I held fast to my concentration, but her excitement began to mingle with my own as I realized I was in fact gathering heat into the palm of my hand and focusing it through the piece of Spark Wood.

But then her small voice became raised with concern. “Wait, what are you doing?”

The world heaved under our feet, the skies rolling with whip cracks of thunder. I couldn’t open my eyes. The pull toward the elements was too strong. I was gathering the air and the water from my own body and the earth, pulling these forces into a single cohesive element.

“Canaan, can you hear me,” Cloak interjected. “You must relax, you’re trying too hard.”

He was barely audible; my ears a noisy wind tunnel growing louder and louder. The Spark Wood floundered in my hand and I felt my body rising off the ground, levitating in mid air, encased in a whirlwind of sand and debris. I could hear them calling out to me, trying to rein me back down to earth, but the wind and the fury of primal forces swept through me, communicating through my cells and blood. A confusing, but intriguing conversation I was unable to interrupt.

The interior of my mind began to glow, brilliant light expanding from a single point of origin, like a single star in a jet black sky plummeting toward the earth. The force blossomed out like a boulder rolling down a hill and smacked right into me thrusting me off my invisible axis and shoved me against the ground with the burst of celestial fireworks.

I felt the Spark Wood pop out of my hands and opened my eyes in time to see if fly up into the air and burst into flame. And as I came down hard against the surface, I watched as the white moths flittering nervously around Little Ember burst one by one like incendiary shells and fell to the ground.

“Hey!” Ember cried. “What’d you go and do that for?”

I sat up raggedly and groggy, shaking the sand out of my hair. I looked around finding Cloak and Ember huddled over the remains of her moths and

“What a thing to do!” Ember yelled hammering her tiny fists into my stomach. “You didn’t even ask them.”

“Em, I’m so, so sorry. I didn’t know what I was doing. I got carried away.”

“An understatement,” Cloak cut in, bemused. “Perhaps you should keep practicing with your glass animals. Hone your focus before you accidentally crack open the world.”

“Hey now, that’s not funny. Beginner’s…”

I stopped mid sentence realizing that Ember’s face was melting. Colors were running down over the cheeks, washing away at the corner of her mouth. Not the paint itself, but the dirt and dust collected over the past several days. Something began pelting me on the top of my head. Tiny pebbles coming down faster and faster. I opened the palm of my armored hand and stared tearfully at the reflection of the sky in the polished surface.

It was raining!

Cool, cleansing rain spilling out of the tortured skies. It came down heavy and strong, and Ember forgetting all about her dead moths began to dance in the downpour, laughing and washing her dirty little arms in the natural showers. The sun and the moon remained in flux and the sky its blistered purple, but there was rain once again in the wasteland and though I did not know how I produced such a miracle, it was good.

We took shelter in one of the overturned boats. It lay on its side and was bowled like the inside of a turtle shell. I continued to practice my newfound abilities, first replenishing Ember’s basket with fresh Oneiroion flowers. It was simple enough and with the rain coming down, they required very little of my blood. It was all very Last Supper with my blood giving nourishment, and though I was unsure if I could turn a stone into a loaf of bread, the flowers were sufficient for now.

To make amends with Ember, I gathered the moth corpses and compacted them into a glass orb like insects frozen in amber. I then began the arduous process of reshaping the wings and their tiny limbs cast in glass. I offered them to her, but she didn’t seem amused by the gesture.

“They are gone, never to shine again.”

She rolled over on her end of the boat and went to sleep listening to the melody of the rain. Rhada Khar stayed outside. He removed his chest piece and sat out on the ground like a watchdog, his silvery blue fur soaked into a deep purple.

“Don’t worry about the girl, Canaan,” Cloak said sitting down next to me. “Every living being must learn folly, or face a lifetime of ignorance.”

“I really thought I had it. I could picture it all in my mind and the fire was there, but I got distracted somehow.”

“It’ll happen. But to be fair you did make fire. The rain however was unforseeable.”

“I have a lot to learn, don’t I?”

He nodded. “But you have the yearning, so it will come.”

“Patience, right?”

Though I couldn’t see, I knew he was smiling.

“Look at it this way, my young master. If the rain doesn’t stop soon, you might’ve made yourself an ocean.”

When the others, including Rhada Khar who found a sleepy serenity at last, were fast asleep, I continued playing with the glass moths. I dedicated long hours to uncover how to make them live again. I tried and failed to use my blood to revive them, but it did not have the same effect as it had on the land.

Frustrated, I picked one of the figures up and balled it into my fist. I reined back my arm like a pitcher about to launch a fast one, and gritted through my teeth, “Why won’t you live!”

I released the glass figurine into the air and it flew through the continuous downpour vanishing out of sight.

I hunkered down into the belly of the ship and sighed. “I guess you can’t have it all, you big dummy.”

Just then I saw a light zip through the air in front of the ship. At first I mistook it for a flash of lightning, but then it zipped back again and then stopped and hovered in front of me.

It was ablaze with radiance, but it didn’t simply shine, it was made entirely of light.

The sound of its wings made sweet music and flittered and danced happily in and around the droplets of rain, the light catching giving the impression of diamonds falling.

Sometimes, just for a moment you can find beauty in the most unlikely of places.

When Ember awoke the next morning, she found a halo of her beloved moths singing and dancing like pixies over her head.

Her shifting eyes had never shone so blue.

When I learn the secret of the Threads, I’ll be sure to paint the sky that shade, just for her.

I prayed through the night that the rain as Cloak had jested would make an ocean, but there were only puddles. It was a start at least, but would carry us no faster toward our destination. The long journey resumed and we were on our way.

***

The trudge through the rain proved a hindrance as time wore on. Had I busted a water main in Heaven or what? It cooled the wasteland heat and gave us clean water to gather, but in the end it hindered us, with every mile taking longer than the last to traverse. Over time I realized Cloak was not himself. I could see that the journey was wearing on him as much as any of us. His powerful aura was different. The threads of energy that outlined him remained flowing constantly, virile as ever, but his demeanor to carry it lacked the luster I had known. When I confronted him, he tried to derail the conversation, telling me to concern myself with the journey ahead, not his state of being.

“There’s something you’re not telling me. You were gone such a long time and then you come back going all Gandalf on everyone in the temple, but now you’re I don’t know. You look tired.”

“My ailment is none of your concern.”

“Aha! So you admit you’ve got an ailment.”

“Insolent boy, go entertain the child, leave me be.”

I persisted much to his chagrin.

“I just need to know that you’re going to be beside me in this, Cloak and not run off again. I still need you. Even if I say I don’t. I do.”

“I know, young Architect. It was for that very reason I did what I had to do to ensure we stand a chance inside the Citadel.”

“What Cloak? Tell me. What happened to you?”

Cloak rose up and drifted out onto the earth. He threw back his hood which receded from over his head in a haze of black vapor. A mane of jet black curls draped down over his shoulders and back. He turned to face me and as the curls fell around his masked features his eyes flashed two brilliant orbs of blue lightning.

“Do you doubt my power,” asked Cloak, his voice of many rising from somewhere deep and unknown, filling the wasteland with its gigantic immensity.

“No,” I replied, my heart leaping into my throat.

He could be quite terrifying when he wanted to be, his shadow long and spreading like the wings of a great bat. His aura emitted a low drone, like the whir of a wind turbine.

“Then leave it be, and get some rest. We are so close.”

I swallowed my heart back into my chest and stood in front of him. “I can rest later. I want to talk about this now.”

He heightened the intensity of his glare at my persistence.

“The bargain is done. We should not dwell on what has past.”

“What do you mean? What bargain?”

He wouldn’t answer me.

“Cloak?”

Silence.

His evasiveness began to frustrate me. I could feel my fingers curling, my muscles tensing. A stiff breeze raced through my hair. The world shrank around me, closing in around Cloak and Cloak alone.

“You ask me to trust you, but how can I when you conceal so much from me. You once told Baphomet you had so much to tell him, well tell me.”

He twisted his body and began to walk away from me. Fire burned in my belly at his indignation.

And then it began to spread.

“I demand to know!”

A flash of light lashed out of my mouth and smashed into his corporeal form like a sledgehammer and sent the living shadow flying a few feet into the sand. He landed with an audible boom and I stood back agog at what I’d done.

I couldn’t believe it. It took Lamia every ounce of her power to duel with the indomitable Cloak and all it took me was a roar. I charged over to where he landed afraid I’d just killed my dark guardian.

Cloak was on his feet in an instant, but the light raced over his form in fluctuating belts conforming to restrain him in place. He shook frantic and wavered like ink in a vase of water before reassembling himself into a solidified and elegant shape. Eventually the bands of light dwindled like shrinking starlight and he took a moment to regain his composure.

“You’re full of surprises, aren’t you, young one?”

“I’m serious Cloak. We’re more than equals now, remember? You have to level with me.”

He took a moment and readjusted his mask, drawing his hood back into place, dark smoke rings clouding over and concealing his lustrous curls.

“Power, Canaan. I bargained for power, an immeasurable reservoir of power and knowledge done to assist you and to ensure our inevitable journey to the Summit of Pleromabraxas is successful. But a sacrifice was demanded and I offered myself, my immortality. So yes, we are more or less on level ground my young master. We are both powerful beings, but alas mortal.”

I understood now. His exhaustion, his weakened aura, it was mortal limitation on one who had known none before.

“I retain all my gifts, but they are costly and require more meditation to replenish them. It is not easy for me to show weakness. We were not…You did not create my kind to fall, and we have fallen many, many times. I’ve done all of these things against my better judgment; my dealings with Baphomet, my sacrifice, all in servitude for your journey. I am forever and always a Theurgian and your faithful guardian.”

“But mortal? Why, why would you do such a thing to yourself?

“My oath; my vow, Architect.” Cloak said placing both hands on either shoulder. His lightning blue eyes peered into me and for a moment I thought he might wrap me in a fatherly embrace. “I am with you until the end of one or both of us.”

CANAAN DESCENDING (PART TWO)

How long we walked the next several days I do not know. It could have been an entire continent. At one point, I remember turning to look behind me to see the city, but there was nothing beyond but the distorted ridge of the horizon, the city swallowed in heavy clouds of dust behind us. Time moved differently than in the world I knew, but I could feel the wearing on my limbs. We rested only when necessary, and when I tried to speak to either of my companions they remained resolute in their silence. The unknowable comings and goings of the hours, the disguised nights, the days didn’t bother them. We simply kept walking. Walking along the longest tract of desert road occasionally passing skeletal remains lining the sand like highway signs. At times it felt we were moving steadily downwards, and I was sure the dunes would fracture off into the edge of the world, but then we’d slope upwards and over a steep hill and the road heading into forever grew ever longer, every step one more on a path of crossroads.

The caravan of Revenants pursued us like a monstrous Trail of Tears. Without their priestess or their savior, the dead things had lost their way. One by one in the days that followed they succumbed to the desert, sinking into the sand, living dead monuments collecting on the wayside like garbage.

They were not the only stragglers on the road to nowhere. The cunning Rhylian, Rhada Khar was seen some yards back keeping close, but far enough to avoid conflict. We set up camp thinking he might join us, but he would only pause in his pursuit to do the same, resting and meditating.

“This desert, it was once a sea wasn’t it?” I said standing in front of Ember’s magical fire, warming my hands. It burned softly from the focus of her Spark Wood.

“An eternity ago, yes,” she replied splitting an Oneiroion flower in half; one part for me and the other for herself. She thrust a sliver into her mouth and chewed. “Silver waves lapping at the Citadel’s shores.”

“I remember,” I said stopping and walked a path in a semicircle. “I can’t explain it.”

As far as my eyes could see the desert expanded, but behind my eyes the dunes ruptured like stomped ant hills, silver water pooling forth, quenching the wasteland’s parched landscape.

I knelt down and enclosed my armored fingers around a handful of sand. I let the grains pass through my finger and observed the swift hourglass effect funneling down to rejoin the mass.

“In a single grain of sand,” I said recalling the glass boy. “An island. In a piece of silver the light of the moon. In an Architect’s hands the vision of the world.”

Ember and Cloak watched as I plucked a single grain from the limitless spread and held it between my gilded fingers.

“I should know what to do, shouldn’t I? I should be able to take this grain and drown us in water. What does it mean that I have no idea how to begin?”

“You will remember, won’t he?” Ember asked Cloak, tugging at his coat. His aura fluttered warmly.

“In time, I imagine. Don’t force it. You’ve been through a great deal, it’s likely-“

He didn’t finish.

My fist slamming into the sand robbed him of his thought.

Both he and Ember stood entranced as the impact of my fist turned my target into a cracked plate of glass, the sand kicked up in a frozen uproar of crystal. It was as though a bolt of lightning had shot out from the sky and blasted the sand into a marvelous and natural work of art.

I stood up and flexed my hand, flecks of dust and grounded glass running over the gauntlet.

“Okay,” I said prideful like a child learning to tie his own shoes for the first time. “That was something.”

Ember clapped her hands together, eyes beaming and all teeth. Her white moths danced around my head.

“Not exactly what I was hoping for.”

“And what did you expect?” asked Cloak.

“An ocean.”

“In time,” he mused. “Simple things I suggest until you better understand the nature of your gifts.”

After we had made camp for the night, I sat with Ember and crafted glass animals from the bounty of sand surrounding us. It seemed second nature to me as though it were little more than clay of Play-Doh. The magic simply rolled off my fingers turning my imagination into the shape and formation I willed it into. Seemed a waste of power, but Ember enjoyed the birds I carved from a solid ball of compacted sand. I could take a handful and crush it into crystal rain drops or draw the crystalline outline of her face in the sand.

By morning I had littered the ground with a full night’s worth of tiny glass animals and buildings. I was consumed by the act, but at no point during the evening was I able to give any of the creations life as I had seen the glass boy do. The knowledge of that gift eluded me, a lesson I hadn’t learnt myself or had yet to unlock.

Cloak assured me I’d learn how to use my powers, but I needed patience. I had achieved the title and powers given by the binding with the Threads, and yet I remain a student and not a master over them. The Collective could have told me that.

***

The wasteland proved to be an inhospitable place as the days rolled on. The ruins of war and the remains of the civilization existing before its fall lay rotting on all sides. It looked like the fake towns they build in the 1950s to examine the effects of radiation after nuclear war. The devastation grew toward the shoreline and stretched beyond into what was once a silver ocean. The waters had long dried up leaving a corroded, pimpled terrain of scorched coral networks and animal remains.

Lying among the ruins and bones of large aquatic beasts we came across a dumping ground with over a dozen or more of the soulless doppelgangers Baru and Lamia had created to forge their god, abandoned and left to rot in the desert. My stomach turned and my head ached from the sight of them confined to their wretched existence and left unburied, possibly in hopes that the unforgiving heat would reduce them to ashes. They flopped about in the sand like fish out of water; mindless fiends moaning under the contorted sun.

“Come away Canaan,” Cloak urged. “Let them be.”

I stared at the unfortunate creatures, volatile with pity and disgust battling for domination over the other.

“They look just like him…like me.”

“But they aren’t you. They never were, only shells.”

I couldn’t look at him. It was vile of him to call them shells, when he had manipulated their unnatural creation and housed Baphomet into one of them. But in the end, were any of us innocent in the mishandling of my soul?

I had to forgive Cloak. He did what he had to do. I understand that.

But it was not only the soul that had been distorted, but my very image. These effigies, crude and duplicitous were the lingering reminder of how easy it would be to replace me. And given the opportunity, I have to wonder if one among them would be a better version of me than I’ve been.

One of the seething doppelgangers crawled along the sand cupping its hand around my foot. I went to kick it away, but it opened its eyes and gazed up at me. It had my eyes and though it was unable to form words, I understood its pain. It begged for deliverance and release from its own self ignorance and emotional captivity.

“No,” I said backing away from it. “I…I can’t.”

“Canaan?” Ember said drawing close.

“Stay back, Ember. Don’t go near it.”

The mirror image reached out, stretching its wiry limbs, dragging its putrid frame across the hot, rough surface, relentless in its aim to be destroyed.

“Please,” I begged. “Don’t make me do this.”

Soon the others mimicked the demeanor of the one at my feet and one by one approached me, slow, silly things spilling over each other like pale slugs.

Cloak and Ember remained silent, both waiting in anticipation to see what I might do.

I saw myself in their eyes, pathetic reflections of myself abandoned and abused. I knew their pain and so it was in that knowledge that I succumbed to my own desperation and set upon the poor creatures dismantling them one at a time until they whimpered no more. Cloak didn’t dare try to stop me. And Ember she averted her eyes as I made a mess of their horrid shapes. I tore them apart like a lion taking down a wildebeest. It was the only mercy I could provide them. It was the only thing I could do to make them stop crying.

I pummeled their bodies into the ground, turning flesh to glass and bone to dust. My strength was enhanced and my hatred an overheated engine wailing into my mirror images as though I were breaking numerous mirrors with my bare hands. I wanted them dead. I wanted them gone. I couldn’t stand the look of my own face anymore.

The Revenants longed for death as part of the Lamia’s sick and twisted indoctrination, but my grim doubles only craved mercy.

I cannot say with a whole heart that it was mercy I delivered to them.

It seemed impossible to erase myself. So I found catharsis in their bloodstains and silence.

A hand reached out behind me and pressed against my shoulder.

“It is enough,” a husky voice said. “Toil no more.”

I looked up to see a great shadow standing over me.

“Got tired of skulking off behind us?” I breathed snidely.

Rhada Khar pulled me back onto my feet, his massive arms enfolding my chest. I felt myself reclining against him, his armored chest supportive and strong. The beastly warrior held me firmly in his protective embrace until my body relaxed enough for him to be sure I’d not endanger the others or myself.

I stepped away from him and looked at the blood coating my hands, thoroughly staining my gauntlet. I lowered my eyes then and gaped at the massacre at my feet.

“Is this it? Is this the last of them?” I gasped, catching my breath.

Cloak moved next to me and shook his masked head. He didn’t know, not completely. But I was sure. I felt it in my gut.

“The desert has a lot of shadows,” I said watching the clouds drift overhead in the methane and magic poisoned sky. “But mine is my own again. I intend on keeping it that way.”

CANAAN DESCENDING (PART ONE)

I woke up on the otherside of the mirror, inside a tent on a bed of desert sand. I opened my eyes to the distorted sky, the warmth of a fire outside stealing inside to chase the cold wasteland winds away. I placed a hand to my head and realized that the gauntlet remained on my left hand, an impressive armament of metal and glass. The keys dangled from their rings, each pristine and intricate in their design. I wonder what wonderful doors they open.

I touched my face to find that the mask was also set upon my head, molded so that it felt stitched into my flesh. There were raised surfaces in the construction of its features, some sharp, others smooth and delicate. I could only imagine what new and intriguing Beast I’d become. I was naked, and the tattoos given to me by the Collective remained, dark lines of runic threading marking my white marble skin. All that was missing was the Collective’s light. I could feel power radiating inside of me, but the sliver of the Collective’s omnipotent power they’d imparted to me to destroy the Omphalos was now gone, and I knew that the memory of that power was diminished as themselves.

But there was a light in me now and though it might not shine as brightly as the godly triad, I was a power unto myself. But oh to feel that love again!

I sat up adjusting to myself and this new, interesting means of travel.

Would there be more dreams? Or was this now my life now, traversing realms back and forth?

It is new and exciting, but all the more terrifying, producing only more questions when what I need are answers and understanding.

Folded on the ground beside me sat an old duster. On top of its cushion was Baphomet’s necklace, a single piece of circular glass. I reached out and instantly brought both items to my chest. The old cowboy’s scent still clung to the leather. It was patched hastily in various places, especially the back and shoulders with mismatched threads, but Fawkes’ coat was a sight for sore eyes. I slipped the necklace on first, letting it rest just above my new scar. I placed my arms into the coat next and realized someone had fashioned a hood to it. The left cuff was cut away so that my armament could express itself with little restriction. I enclosed myself in its warmth and security and drew the hood over my masked face.

I stepped outside the tent and found Cloak waiting for me. He sat behind a small campfire alone and silent.

Little Ember was fast asleep, snuggled in deep beneath heavy blankets. Her staff bit into the earth and there she hung her basket. I could see into the basket that she had among several flowers, cloth and a threading needle. I bent down and kissed her porcelain cheek.

“Thanks for the repairs, little one,” I whispered into her small, seashell ears.

I was pleased to see them both, thankful they were alive, but one was missing.

“Eos? Where’s Eos?”

Cloak did not speak, but continued to stare into the heart of the fire. His palpable aura seemed weaker somehow, fainter than it had been during the confrontation in the Omphalos.

“Cloak?” I approached gingerly. “Are you alright?”

He shifted where he sat and realigned his patchwork mask. In the firelight it appeared as though each patch of color were aglow. He seemed unnaturally human.

“Her wounds were too great,” he managed finally. “Her faculties were unable to support her broken form.”

No, I thought to myself. This was all wrong. I saved her.

“I…I’m sorry.”

I didn’t know what to say. She was the second casualty on this journey, the first Baphomet. The guilt chewed at my heart.

“Was she…I mean…Did she…Was there much pain?”

He shook his shrouded head. “She went quietly, unable to say much really in the end. Ember soothed her as much as she could with Baphomet’s flowers. They eased her suffering greatly.”

I looked back toward Ember’s basket. The Oneiroion blooms were all but gone, harvested in hopes to mend the broken Oracle back to health. The remains wafted the air from a small pot hanging over the fire. It was sweet, like honey-suckle and chamomile tea.

“I wish I could have been here. I should have been. I could have helped her.”

“Life and death are only states of being. They do not define who we are, for it is what we did with the time we are given that matters. Eos knew this and she had lived her life, following through on her own fate until the end.”

His sullen disposition was suspect. I knew his connection to the Oracle had to be deeper than he let on.

“You loved her, didn’t you?”

He looked up, head cocked to one side, stunned by the question.

“It was another life, in another world, my young Architect. We were fated never to be, decreed by our stations, but I have defied that barrier one final time,” he said pointing to his chest. “She is with me, always.”

I understood his meaning all too well. He had taken her into himself, into the sanctuary of his void. And though he wore the trappings of the shadows, I knew he had a special light burning bright for her.

“It is good that you’ve returned,” Cloak said shifting the subject and returned his gaze to the fire. “I had hoped you’d discover the way.”

“Cloak, if you need to talk, I’m here.”

“The transmissions…the dreams are over,” he continued, ignoring me. “It is on you now to act. I am only your servant now, not a guide.”

He made a simple gesture for me to sit. I took my place near him to ensure our conversation would not bother the sleeping pair’s comfort.

“What happened in the temple? You obviously were able to get them out.”

“You did that, young one. You saved us and brought the Omphalos down around our enemies.”

I looked at him puzzled in spite of myself. “I…I did?”

Cloak nodded.

“Lamia? Is she…?”

“I do not know for certain. One moment we were there watching the Architect express his power, and the next we were in the wastes, disoriented, but safe.”

“So,” I sighed. “What happens now?”

“We continue our sojourn to the Citadel. That is unless you decide to vanish again.”

“I didn’t expect to. I wanted to stay, to make sure you all made it out alive and clearly you have.”

“Not without a cost.”

“It’s not fair. Lamia stole her power and left her to die. I should have ripped the witch’s heart out and made her eat it.”

“You dispatched her justly in the end. But do not mourn Eos. She was never like you or I. She was made of flesh and bone and taken to the limits of the Lamia’s cruelty, even the strongest could fall.”

“What can I do? There has to be something. This isn’t just a fancy accessory is it?” I asked holding up my gilded left hand.

Cloak shook his head. “You should not concern yourself in this matter. To interfere now would intrude upon her fate’s significance. It is something you must learn, to steel yourself for what awaits you within the Citadel.”

“And what is that?”

He grew silent. In the distance a dismal wail shot out. I rose up like a wolf on alert. I sniffed the air, stale death wandering vagrantly.

“Revenants,” I murmured. “They’re near.”

“Yes. They’ve been following us. A pitiful caravan, what few escaped your wrath.”

“What do they want?”

“Remuneration I imagine. The true power of the land has returned. They are anxious to beseech your mercy.”

“Mercy? I’m not sure I’ve got much left to be honest. Feels like all I want to do is take this power back to the real world and use it on everyone who’s ever hurt me. Vengeance isn’t something a god should be feeling is it?”

“Depends on the god.”

Maybe it was the nearness of the undead on the air, the heady smoke from the fire, or Eos’ death, but my head began to throb.

“Something troubles you?”

“My head is buzzing.”

“Residual transference from the Forge. It should pass soon.”

Flashes of white noise shuddered in my head. My thoughts were broken radio waves picking up shitty signals and radiation burns.

“I’ve just been thinking. My head is flooded with thoughts, memories, and dreams. Both my own and Baphomet’s. I know what he knows. I’ve seen what he sees. It’s very confusing to sort through.”

“They are your memories too, you realize?”

“I know that. I mean I understand. It’s just with everything now in motion I just keep thinking about what it’s all for. And is it worth what you did to him?”

The folds of his rustling robes came to a static halt, and in that ceasing so it seemed the entire world around us came to a complete standstill.

“I did what I had to do to ensure the line would continue.”

“You lied to him. You fed him lies knowing how fragile he was.”

Cloak stood up, a teacher preparing to reprimand a disobedient student.

“You question my methods, my care of the boy when you were so quick to disbelieve he existed?”

“You made him into a monster.” I accused.

I was standing now, confronting him head on.

“I made him into the most elegant and important creature vital to our cause. Without the Craft you could not ascend. Without the Craft there can be no Architect.”

“But you didn’t give him a choice.”

I realized my voice was rising in volume. I heard Ember shuffle beneath her blankets and retook my place by the fire trying to choke back my anger.

“I have been forced to make many difficult choices. I do not expect you to understand my reasons, but I did what I had to because I believe firmly that you are the one to salvage this world.”

“Destiny?”

“Yes.”

“But why? Why did you do this thing to him? After everything I’ve experienced, I think I have a right to know why you manipulated my soul.”

“The Craft was dying. During its journey to the Fringe. Its immortal vestige was diminishing and a portion of your consciousness was astray. I salvaged one of the duplicates and fashioned a vessel to contain the fractured part of you. I gave it life and that life was to serve a much more important purpose in housing the Craft until I could acquire you and bring you to this world to complete the Forge as has been accomplished. I did not foresee that he would physically transform into the likeness of the Craft, but as the weakened Craft is essentially parasitic in nature, though that seems quite a vulgar definition, I have surmised that the form it was contained within was merely too weak to sustain the Craft and therefore was slowly being overtaken.”

“And how does this change what I am?”

“You are the true vessel. You were naturally born to contain its power.”

“But Baphomet…Now he…”

I could see him in my mind disappearing into me. I could relive it, the sensation of it happening over and over again. Our hands and lips pressed into one another in a sort of intimacy and then made as one pair.

“He is you as you are him. You now share dual experiences as one. It is like a book, torn apart, pieces removed. Apart they can be indiscernible, abstract passages, but placed back together the knowledge resumes its intended course.”

“But he had companions. People he cared for. Jasira and Eos…Fawkes.”

“They were your companions too and the feelings that he felt for them, especially Fawkes are now yours. In more ways that even I fathomed. You must stop seeing Baphomet as an individual. He was merely a piece of you and now you are whole. Do not lament the past when you can canonize the future.”

“And if I’m still not ready to face my own death, what then?”

“I cannot know how any of this may end. What I do know is that our fates are our own, and the world is what you create. All is not lost my young Architect. And there is yet so much still to gain. You have the power now, don’t be afraid of it."

“I don’t know what I want yet, Cloak," I said staring through the flames into his cowled face.  "I don’t know if I’m ready to give up my other life for this one entirely.  I think I have to have both for now.  For a little while longer.”

"Traverse these worlds as you will, but know that one day you will have to choose which one you belong to. I cannot make that choice for you. It has always been your own.”

XLVII. MAY 30th - JUNE 1st

SATURDAY, MAY 30th (HOW MANY MINUTES TILL I DECAY?)

“There’s not much left to love…Too tired today to hate…I feel the empty…I feel the minute of decay…”- Marilyn Manson

THE ARCHITECT OF NOTHING:

I watched the world from inside a mirror

A grand parade in fragmented glass

Beauty sustains, but the blood never lasts

Nothing goes as you plan

Clinging to a star that always

Appears quite close till you stake a claim

If only I could start again

As easily as it all began

I am the architect of my broken machine

SATURDAY, MAY 30th (LATER): (16 YEARS=90 IN A DAY OF THE LIFE…)

“I’m on my way down now…I’d like to take you with me…I’m on my way down now…”- Marilyn Manson

Dear Virgil, not staying long. Realized that my birthday is in 8 days. Think I’ll ask for a new journal. This one’s just about finished. It’s been a good run, Virgil. I’ll resurrect you soon, if I don’t kill myself before I have the inspiration to write. Not much to say. Dante’s collar makes a nice accessory around my wrist. It shouldn’t have been this way. I want to go back, why can’t I go back? Why is it always too late?

I stood naked in front of the bathroom mirror this morning, running my hands over the scar on my chest. Such an insignificant wound compared to the last few days. I’m a stranger here. I know that. I don’t know where I’m supposed to belong, but I know it isn’t here. I’ve been dreaming of Baphomet the past several nights and sometimes when I’m just sitting there I feel myself slipping into a different train of thought and I’m visited by memories. So many faces I’ve never met and yet after a moment or two, they become mine, filed away accordingly. It’s not that I don’t mind the company. It’s just hard to keep a quiet mind lately. There are things I need to do, promises needing to be kept, destiny to fulfill, but I have to slow down or I’m going to cave in. I’m going to be seventeen in a little over a week, and I wonder how many more I have left to look forward to.

MONDAY, JUNE 1st (CANAAN DESCENDING)

“Fear not, for no one can take from us our onward way, by such a one it is given to us. But here await me, and comfort thy dejected spirit and feed on good hope, for I will not leave thee in the nether world…”- Dante

Dear Virgil, they say when one door closes another opens. I can testify that this is true. I was up before anyone else this morning. The sun wasn’t roused just yet, still drowsy under a copse of dark clouds, while I myself exceedingly restless. I stepped onto the front porch and walked to the center of the sidewalk. Across the street there’s a gas station sharing a building with the Dollar Store Cassie works at. The streets were quiet, only the buzz of the pink and blue neon Wine and Beer sign buzzing like a bug zapper.

I chose the path to the left of me and went for a long walk. I had no idea where the route would take me. I just knew I had to get out of my head. It’s getting cramped in here, not enough space to stretch my legs, you know.

I came to a cross street and veered to the right around the corner and eventually came to an old church. It was long abandoned and in disrepair, whole walls removed as though someone had considered pulling it down, but then got distracted and left it derelict on its own. I decided then and there that this was now my place. At least until someone came to finish the job. It sat at the end of a quiet block, with a football sized field between it and the nearest house. No one would bother me here, and so with my curious nature intact, I investigated further.

The pulpit was wrecked and the altar smashed. Rows upon rows of pews were overturned and I saw several bibles face down underneath and scattered about. And though it smelled of cat urine from the strays who sauntered along the support railings overhead, it seemed the perfect place for me. Afterall, I had just collapsed my temple in the other world.

I was careful, walking in the half-light, wary of rusty nails and other transients who might have come here to roost. Aside from a bird building a nest in the far west side of the church, and a stray here and there, I was all alone, left to the conflict of my own thoughts. The most constant of these, Home.

I imagined them happy at last. Free. Maybe this was the best thing after all.

How do you miss what never really belonged to you in the first place?

It was not unlike the days when I was small seeking adventure in dangerous places. I loved getting lost in the woods or wandering attics and deep closets. I found a door still intact into its frame leaning against a wall. I cleared a path, shoving furniture and planks of wood out of the way. I gathered the old door and pulled it into the middle of the room and stood it upright. It teetered back as though it might fall backwards, so I quickly gathered several pieces of wood and stone to secure it in place.

The paint was chipped away, dull gray with crude graffiti scrawled all over. I stood back and admired it as the morning sun ignited its first rays through holes in the roof.

What happened next might very well signify the end of my sanity, but then again, I don’t think I had much of one to begin with.

A sharp pain jolted in my chest. I felt my knees buckle and my throat seized up as though I were having an allergic reaction to something. I tried to cry out, but my jaw wouldn’t move. A second spasm echoed in my chest with an electric current and I went down in front of the door. I clutched my chest, the scar underneath my shirt burning. Hot and cold shivers of pain surged under my skin and I thought my chest might explode.

My head swam with fever, the pain excruciating and I could barely keep my eyes open. But in the pain I heard voices, whispers traveling back and forth across the landscape of my mind.

“You open the door, Riftwalker…You remember the words?”

I couldn’t open my mouth to answer. My teeth felt fused into the top and bottom rows.

Even had I known the words the voice suggested, the ruthlessness of the pain would not relent long enough for me to speak them.

“Breath meets air,” the voice spoke through the violence bending me forward. “Blood meets tongue. Bone meets end…”

A flash of light seared my line of sight and I saw myself as Baphomet in the Fringe with an old magician in a tattered tuxedo. I knew him, not on my own, but with the aid of Baphomet’s memories in my possession. Aurelius Fairweather, the traitor among the companions, exercised, reciting ancient words to unlock a door. The magic denied him, the words powerful to one who deserved it.

I forced myself forward and reached out to the doorknob. My fingers stung and my heart raced. It felt like something was cutting into it, splitting it in half. I remembered then the shard of Breeze lodged into my chest and how the mysterious scar manifested upon my skin where one hadn’t been before. It was alive inside of me, reacting somehow, needing me to react in turn. I closed my eyes and pushed up on my heels to stand. I pressed one hand to the door while the other prepared to twist the knob and I opened my mouth, whispering two alien words:

“Patefacio ianua…”

I pushed the door open and the world opened up.

I know now that I am changed forever.

A swirling rift awaited me, contained within the doorframe. I walked around the backside of the doorway and it appeared as a one-sided pane of glass.

This was not a dream. Hallucination perhaps, but no dream.

I expected Cloak to manifest as he had done in the field, but I had opened this portal on my own.

The pain melted away as I approached the door, but my heart thrummed rampantly in my chest. There was a surprising lack of fear however and I did not hesitate as I had before. I wanted to go this time. I wanted the escape of the wasteland and of the mystery of my otherworldly powers. Even if it could only last a short time, I needed to find the light once more and hope it would have me again.

I took a step forward, crossing the threshold and winked out of this reality’s existence, pulling the door closed behind me.