Iblis Has Fallen

[Fleeperpriest 261]

 

Three men set out from the Great Temple of the Prophets in Aaun, conducting with them to safety the Flame of the Godhead, which was known to them to be the seal by which the Covenant of the Third Son of Spirit, the Preserver, would be struck and kept. They knew not how, or why, for who- but that it had to be, and that it was, and that the prophecy made known to them was clear. 

 

Wreathed around the blade, as Owyn had once wielded it, the Flame was carried forth by those odd men into the wilderness, leading them by the light and warmth, weak though it may have been in that fickle place that had by all means the will to forsake it.

 

An Arch-Lector, now estranged and engulfed in eastern goobledygoop, guided to the place where he had met the party, knew well the weight of the duty that he alone could bear, having the blade, and having once in his youth dedicated himself to the Spirit. A Priest, he was, a Lector, once. But those times were long ago. He had thought different things now, he had explored, and he had by his own admission strayed so far from what he had once believed so as not to carry with him anymore the name of the rite that once had known him as great champion, keeper, samaritan. 

 

But who, for any doubt could, in the presence of the Spirit, deny the charge put forth to him? To turn-head ignore the ordained vocation of a man? And so it was that the odd man, once Arch-Lector, hesitated, and contemplated, and prodded at that dormant core of his faith that was the flame within his heart. And so it was that the man was again Arch-Lector, the flame alight, the call of vocation heard by him.

 

A Cardinal, a Lord, a father and now priest, but man of the world, that few men would dare to call a Saint, who, belonging to a wealthy and influential family that thrived and prospered off of politik, pragmatism and loyalty to cause in such a way that moved them not to any radical action for good or ill, could never have been expected to be subsumed totally by the will of God. Verily, no man could have predicted a prophet could come of him, no less the man himself. It was not until the man had come to don the mitre, perhaps, that he had become a man so worthy of the vocation thrust upon him. And so knowing that the man was not given to radical thought nor faithful trance, seeing that he had spoken to them theuopneustos, all had known at once the import of the mission set out to them by the voice of Man, but by the word of another who now operated that voice as an instrument of divine will. 

 

A mad priest, a crypto-lucienist of the Priesthood of Owyn, a rabbi, and to some, though he would himself prefer the scourge than to so much as entertain the idea, a heresiarch; joined also those gathered men, so eager in his spirit to see the will, 'Emmanuel, Emmanuel,'  as to be, to most men, most certainly mad. A slave of the slaves of the servants of God, he had driven them forth with an uncanny desperation. 'Follow, follow!' was the cry. And so the call was heard, and had been heard many times before. Some had followed him, and in following him did they do as he wished of them, so pleasing, and typical, as many a man skeptical had thought. What they would not understand was that he, for himself, would not step one foot beyond where that Flame had first gone forth, not gazed where that Light had not shined, not spoke but by the stoke of that Spirit, not woke but by the drive of the One. For that, his ever-echoed commands, 'Follow, follow!'  were not for the satisfaction of him, but for the will of his Master. 'Follow him, follow him!'  they ought to have heard.

 

A swordsman, a soldier, a once-brigand, now Knight, a son of Virtue, a righteous man joined and testified. It was written, he knew, that the fruit of Virtue did not rot. Whether the man had intended for it or not, those words had come to be the law by which all of his life had been defined. Nothing did he do that he did not divine to be right and good, no place did he go that he had not felt called to go- though he was a wanderer, and of a lost tribe. The measure of man who spoke no lie, fore he could not bring himself to do it, the pain of it having become known to him, in some distant past, as the most heinous of pains inflicted upon a soul. Perhaps it was in his youth- perhaps he had divined it in a dream, none but he could say, but that he told no lies was the pure and honest truth. All he saw he had transcribed, dedicating to mind the truth of events, and in that way became unto his tribe a testifier, a witness. Now, it seemed, he was to glory God with this fruit of Virtue his person had wrought, and with every divination seen, every challenge surpassed, did glorify the Almighty in his saying, 'This is the truth, here is the truth.' whether the words left him by his voice, or remained known only to him. It was true, he had seen it, it was the truth. And by every truth he glorified as it was, God, too, was glorified with him and by him.

 

 

 

Where they had gone, no man could rightly say. It was known they were to leave, its was well recorded, and testified by good men who bore the Cross in knightly service in those lands. They must surely have wandered long- and eventually, the man, the Cardinal, had returned from their wandering in the wilderness and rejoined society, saying, 'I was never to see where they should be lead.'  which was in keeping with his prophecy.

 

It was atop some distant peak, in a land with no name, in a place forsaken by Man but known well to God, that the Flame had again made touch with the Earth. A a miracle of infinite appreciation in its own right, a man may long ponder, that God should by any sign make known his presence in so rotten a world. In an instant, as that flame, so high above the land, finding itself in the place it had wished to be, took violently and erupted. Here was secured, they had said, the Flame by which the sins of the Sons of Horen were in-held, weighed upon that spirit in pardon. Here burned the seal of the Covenant of the Third Son of Spirit, the Fourth Prophet of the True Faith as God had revealed it. Here burned the purifying flame of Owyn, to whom the presence of The Presence was made known to dwell, and who, wielded by Man, purified the world. Perhaps this, too, was a purification, of sort. Perhaps what it held would be burnt away. Perhaps it would ever remain. They knew but one thing, this Flame was the enemy of the world, and that its loss would spill upon the Earth all the sins of that fallen creed, Horen, who for so long a time had forsaken his Father. A danger it was, too, to them. A representation of the law, of the purification of spirit that they could not endure. If it were that they were clean things, they could pass through it without issue- but it had singed the flesh of Horen when Horen had dared to go forth to touch what by Horen's heart was beloved, so estranged they had become. A filth, a dirt, a stain, an unclean presence within them forbade it. Perhaps it was forbidden by their own souls, and that the fire itsself never did burn them, but the guilt. They knew well the guilt, today. They knew well that one must keep the flame by which they shall, God willing, be burned, some day. They knew the world would never have it, that it would be taken away from them. Perhaps one among them knew the truth of it- there was no taking away, only a sending away. Horen would out God from his camp as Julia had cast out that man they called Saul, who should more accurately have been known as Sigismund, they thought. 

 

 

What they could not have known, save for the one who had both sent them upon this quest and left them to complete it and returned, was what had befallen the world in the wake of their absence. As a consequence of their absence? Certainly not, they could not think so- fore none of them were men who, removed from society, would cause so quickly its utter and abject collapse. All of those men had been forsaken men, Horenites of a creed that had for five hundred years been known only to distant enclaves and to dark caves, caverns, and sanctuaries wherein they would not be know the persecution that had befallen them in the wake of that greater collapse, what was remembered now as 'the founding of our Church', that had for some reason required re-forging after the Prophets themselves had done the job, but was more accurately known to them as 'the Schism'. It was in that time, Horen had called, 'God, begone now from us, you have set upon us a burden we do not wish to bear! Begone, begone!'          And through the spilling of blood, sealed the wound upon that covenant, which now in Horen's blood was written the cry of his avoidant will. Man did not wish to see redemption. It was for this reason they rejected The Redeemer, Emperor, when they could, Prophet Godfrey, in this schism war. They would speak his name, utter it, yes, but what of his Covenant? They knew it not. The enjoyed the liberty of weightlessness, and fashioned for themselves a crown of ignorance, that was to them a great comfort. "I need only rule the Earth." said Man, Horen, "And Paradise shall come to me!" said Saul, the Sigismund. A far cry from what God had asked of them, and promised of them, when he had raised from them Redeemer.

 

The will of Iblis had come then and glanced the Earth

 

In an instant, it was lost. The soul, the thinking mind, some had surmised. In an instant it was fire, bloodshed, it was brother against brother. It had begun first in the House of Horen, as Horen had plunged the dirk into his own belly. That chosen people descended upon one another with maddened fervor, a total craze. Before the Archenemy had required deception to illicit, from Man, this manner of bloodshed. It had taken greed, avarice, promises of a glory unattainable, promises of revenge for crimes only imagined, promises for justice that were not justice but fiction, and promise for pleasure where pleasure was not due. It was not so in those hours, on that day, in what Man had once hoped to call the Year of their Lord, nineteen-fifty-five, but was more, in truth, the five hundred and eighth year of the long heresy, the age they now-in dwelled, Ehr Sigmunda.

 

None at first could speak, their senses dulled. Then had come the voice, 'As you please,' in confident assurance. How willing Man had gone into the embrace of their father-adoptive, the enemy. They knew not how much he despised them, how much their sin repulsed him, how much he so simply wished them gone. They did not think to dwell on those things, anymore; they did not much think at all. Horen, who was at one moment 'Man', was now 'man', animal. Eradication was the word. It was always the word of their father, though he had well hidden it, inveigled it in nicer, finer clothing. Never before had he been able to present it naked to them, before now. The rivers ran red with blood, and in those hours all the Earth was in warfare, for no end and no master but for war and war and yet more war, and war with no resource or reprieve, waged with what was on hand, and what was from other hands pried as Julia had cast stone over the head of Horen, and Horen dirked still Julia, and no peace to be found in any place. It was a parody, perhaps, of the divine plan, in that by God's Chosen, Horen-Man, Horen's brothers would be one day saved. This was the aim of Empire, as Man had long elected to forget. And so as Man descended into madness, the fate of Malin, Krug and Urguan was too sealed, and the curse spread, before long, also to them. This was the fate of the Earth that Man had once said, in his folly, 'shall be my Paradise!' 

 

Then, darkness, his 'Paradise'.

 

All had gone black unto that dark world. What began first as Man's inability to speak, and evolved then into Man's thirst for blood, had ended finally in Man's blindness. It was tranquil, there. It was tranquil, then, throughout all the land- though they had not deserved it. From atop that mountain ablaze, where the Presence rested, all was bright. They could see, yonder still, the darkness that had engulfed the world, that contrasted poorly with the greater-than-day light cast upon them otherworldly. Could it be that the flame had taken it all? Could it be that the weight of all of Horen's sin rested nullified within that Flame, now? Justice should have seen all the world in that moment away, eclipsed, smothered, the animating fire of it all swept out by the parental hand. And yet, it had not. For all the guilt known to those men, three, upon the hill, and for all the tears that they had spilled, they still knew only of the burden of the past before them. They could not know of this new weight, this added weight of all the world's sin somehow withheld from the court, for now, that would testify against them. The trouble for that time was over, light again poured into the world. The raging flame retreated from that great inferno it had borne into when first it touched the brush, quieting in peace before the men. A simple presence it then again appeared to them, a flame. It seemed almost exhausted, perhaps it was- perhaps the pain of it all had weighed upon it. But on this mount it was in peace, and that quest had seemed fulfilled.

 

'The Hyperwar'  was over, Man again awoke, and Malin, and Krug and Dorf with him. In accordance with the prophecy revealed unto them, the seal of the Covenant of the Third Son of Spirit, the Preserver, was made and safekept. 

 

א

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited March 5 by Fleeperpriest
קלח

[sam33497 2794]

Lanre Cerusil awakes from his total omni-jihad versus the universe, horrified at the blood he found on his hands.

[Reckless Banzai Screamer 11639]

Kato Oijin looks longingly into the pyre beneath the temple - pagoda, still trying to catch a glimpse of vision from the almighty Kamisama.

[Lojo613 1420]

Father Stor bows his head in prayer, for the ancient father of Elohim fought a different kind of Hyperwar than his kind, the Hyperwar of spirit. In every culture, there is one constant, the monomythos. The Black Samurai of the Oyashi, the Black Oni of the Onishiman, the Dark Knight of the Citronian, the Onyx Emperor of the Li-Ren, the Dark Khan of the Horde, the Prince in Black of the Gospel. Perhaps it was the Covenant who would stumble across Owyn's reincarnation, the Owynssiah, the prophesized PRINCE IN BLACK, FINAL SON OF SPIRIT. . .

[SteppeNomad 1552]

Mechpriest Adeptus #003, Veteran of the HYPERWAR of the Owynssiah busy forging the tools of the HYPERWAR was absolutely gobsmacked when the black orphan risen from the land of Jorens kin was introduced to him by good Sister Zelda...

 

Inquiry, Oh ancient machine, has the light of progress finally come

 

That very same day, did he and the champion Vardek The Exalted, the Xambalan Hyper-warrior speak long and restlessly about the mechinations of the worldwheel, of the nature of existence. With those ancient Xambalan lore, did they know true the way forward. Towards progress most sacred...

 

"And THEY will be HIS KRUGSMARINES, and they will know NO FEAR"

 

Adeptus and the HYPERWARRIOR began their programme

[wowj 2838]

"KILL THEM ALL." A voice echoed throughout Father Callahan's mind.

[milksoda 719]

JENNY HAD AWOKEN NAUGHT ONLY FROM SLUMBER BUT FROM BLINDNESS, VISIONS OF FLAMING SHRUBBERY EMBOSSED THEMSELVES UPON THE THE VERY FABRIC THAT WEAVED HER DREAMS "I must follow." GASPED THE EGREGORE, AS HER HEAD PRACTICALLY SLAM INTO THE HEADBOARD OF HER COMICALLY LARGE BED. IN CAIUSIAN FASHION DID THE ENTITY SEEK TO FIND THE WISE FATHER CALLAHAN.

 

[LordofCabbage 174]

The Testifier bore witness with his very own eyes . . .