Callahan's Crisis and the Curse of Malin

[Fleeperpriest 261]

Celah returned to the temple in Numendil, worn from the sudden and spontaneous invasion of the ancient DRUIDIC menace, planting a proud, tall palm into a vase, that many more like it may be set in that place after the day, to one day fuel triumphant OWYN'S FLAME. He stood over his desk, energized by adoration, and fueled by that fervent mission which was to him an abundant and nigh infinite well of energy, and took to one of many scrolls strewn about his desk.

 

SLAM!

 

In an instant, Callahan were struck silly, physically reverberating mid-air as the shockwaves of the impact of what had felt like a tidal-wave nearly sent him off his feet, dumbstruck! He came to in a panic, grabbing hold of his desk, clamping down his hands upon the sides of it so as to anchor himself to the ground, and weathered through the storm of the blast which knocked him silly! Coming to his wits, he made at once to diagnose the source of his spontaneous torment, only to gaze down at a black parchment strewn out upon his desk, which took his breath. His bodily eyes took to gaze upon it, but his mind could only read one sentence or two at the very beginning and end before his soul, in a fit of contemptuous wrath made the entirety of the thing illegible and mute to him. 

 

OH NO!

 

He staggered back away from the desk, and froze where he stood. Something was missing, something was wrong. Very, very wrong. His eyes scanned about the room for a moment, in a vain attempt to visually diagnose what had, in an instant, been robbed of him. The first thing he noticed was the dead silence. The man's mind was a grim, vast emptiness, totally dull and spiritually vacant. If he listened close, he could have sworn he heard his own conscious echo, sent out into an alien darkness un-heard by the resident commentary of the sanhedrin of the thoughts. 

 

Seldom was he ever afforded a moment alone, a moment in silent, that ever-present song and dance of the pursuit and clinging to GOD his sole driving joy, and all-encompassing devotion. He had built his life around it, in his every deed, to pull from the well of God's grace and dip just a little bit of everything available to him in the oils of the Spirit, in as much as they were afforded to him. It worked spectacularly well, and afforded the man peace, an odd peace that was most certainly not contentedness, himself a very vexed man, but an anxious, un-ending pursuit of a goal he knew soon to be at hand. He had not cared even if it were 'at hand' to be done tomorrow, or in a thousand years time. He danced precariously just beyond the blazing truth of the Fires of God, as close as a man can cling without entering into the fires themselves.

 

Except, in this moment, he felt incredibly mundane. He felt only the human being that he was, only Callahan, who apart from this greater component of his person was severely and incredibly munted. Munted, dented, HE WAS COOKED, and probably mad. He could have sworn this room was brighter. It's near pitch-black in here, but it had been all alight with flame, just moments ago, on every side! It was BRIGHT, this little sanctum in the depths of the Cathedral of Saint Caius, BRIGHT! Darkness was an unfathomable thing in the midst of the incredible luminosity of that room. But it was near pitch black now. Maybe it was his eyes.

 

He looked to his desk, and saw the place where once was the Holy Grail; now, there was just a cup. He perked a brow. Oh dear...

 

Study gave way to grim comprehension of the emptiness of his thinking. What was once dominated by an ineffable tapestry of incomprehensible orders, commands, prophecies, liturgies, where once was the nigh-ever-present Aengul Raguel, Justice of the Lord, who had been the first nudge in the direction of spiritual reconciliation of the Church, was nothing at all. In that place that he had seen glimpses into a Kingdom Come was a plain dull nothingness occasionally invaded by clowns. Why clowns? And where he had seen the great Spirit of Innocence by which the world would be made clean, that winged-angel-fleepir of hope, which joined with all these other indescribable things made to complete a glorious endless loop of thought, was... and he forgot what to write. How was he writing at all? 

 

Then came the anger, as what remained of his unaugmented, purely natural and mundane mental faculties now robbed of preternatural assistance understood fully what had happened. He felt the kick of Malin's poison. The consequences of a shared burden were finally making manifest in him. He had loaned something away, something of vital importance to him, his most cherished gift, and permitted another to hold it, and to hold a knife in their hand, full-knowing that it was wholly within their power to destroy it. But it was a gift. A freely given gift. It was Tzedakah, and the greatest of sacrifices. It was the hope for another, a ransom, an exchange, for which he asked no gain and expected only to go into the flames of torment, if but to give a little hope to another soul much more doomed than he. Perhaps it was Tzedakah that had afforded him such a masterful grace. Past-tense, because SOMEONE did SOMETHING, got CURSED and now HE was bearing it. That was the pact he made. 

 

Somewhere a brother of his, who's full right it was to do, stripped another of their Heavenly mandate. Took the golden ticket out of their hands and snipped it FOUL, DENIED, REJECTED, DO-NOT-REDEEM! His own salvation, two-ways split and shared with another that might not even be able to redeem it had been pinned immobile right down into the world by a righteous curse issued by some priest, somewhere, for some reason. He was now spiritually incapacitated.

 

But it couldn't just be curse, no.. many had cursed him before. That SIX-SIX ARNAUD fiend cursed him to the grave once before, and he didn't so much as flinch, not a dent in his armor! Sure, he was a fiend, but he WAS acting High Priest, that's nothing to be scoffed at, he certainly could levy a curse. So it must be more. More than the curse alone. They must've done something horrid, must've denied HIM, must've slighted the SPIRIT, must've committed SOME CRIME that saw them not only cursed by a priest, by estranged, too, by the Ruach HaKodesh, either for the impurity of the deed bidding it to flee him, or through.. goodness, I do certainly hope it was not a blasphemy! 

 

But this was what he signed up for. He knew he would suffer. He took on their curses, what did he expect? He didn't hope any less, though despair weighed on him increasingly by the second. He staggered his way out of the temple, that great bastion of the Flame, Saint Caius' Cathedral of Joy, which too was bathed in darkness despite the incredible overabundance of light. Not even the Clown's light was shining through to where he was! He was accosted on his way.

 

"DID YOU HEAR ABOUT YOUR GENTIL--" and he threw up a palm "NO! I won't hear it. I DON'T WANT TO HEAR IT! Don't tell it to me."

 

They went on, "You know they're fooling you! You can never trust them."

 

He turned to face them and said, "I BELIEVE." and left before he broke down into tears, fore he bore also the shame of his patron.

 

He took up the bindlestiff and set himself upon the path, not of Owyn, fore Owyn's Flame seemed, for the first time in decades, NOT to be the guiding light of his path, but to Rabbi Efrayim. Perhaps it was a miracle that he reached the estranged Gaon so quickly, in his daze, he hardly gave any thought to the incredible distance he had to travel, and the pace which he had to keep to intercept him, who was on the move. But he arrived in the presence of the young Kohen, and put his plight to him, saying, "Rabbi, I fear one of my genti-- I fear one of my people have done something grave. I fear they have taken a pantheist stance on something, or that they have blasphemed, or worse! Put to me the penance." The last words he spoke voiced his own desperation, but alas, this plight of another upon him he could not so easily shake, however eager he was to atone for another's crime, he was not certain he could do so alone. The Rabbi replied: "They must become a ba'alat teshuva!"

 

Callahan's eyes seemed to draw sullen, and his complexion soured, he DROOPED. The certainty which he had put to him the most simple, holy, and potent of legal procedures, not even knowing the extent of the crime! How was he to make amends for this? If it were his own crime, it would be easy, he would need only to confess and rectify, he knew the power of such things! And if it were for any other manner of crime, but that one, he would be certain he could find a means to satisfy it by the Law himself, in such a way as to pay for the crime for the both of them. But how does one rectify a crime of intellect committed by another, without their own express self-refutation! 

 

He never lost hope, but he sure didn't know what to do now. The Rabbi was right. And Celah knew the great potential in the ba'alei teshuva, he knew that if they could do it, and certainly it was his hope for them even when he had taken on the poison, even before he had actually come face to face with the crimes. He knew if they did it, he would be right, and they could take that golden ticket he gave them and soar well above even their standing, having given it to them in the first place! The potent grace of such a thing would be proof enough that his sacrifice was not only meaningful, but salvific, efficacious in ways he could not fathom! 

 

Except he had no idea how to make that happen, now. He could try and find them, hunt them down, find what happened and rebuke them, teach them. But as the moments passed, his intellect dulled, he wasn't sure if he could accomplish even that without the Light. And besides that, he had already taught them a great deal, lectured them plenty! The comparatively now-animal intellect of the priest-previously-probably-Tzadik simply wasn't up to par.  He did not think it would be of any use to him now. He shuddered to think that this may be how the Mali'im feel all the time. Nasty...

 

But perhaps, just maybe, while HE was suffering the consequences both of their crime, and of their curse, MAYBE, just perhaps, potentially, the Ruah he coveted, had NOT fled them! Perhaps, for that HE suffered for the crimes and curses of whoever-it-was, THEY still were not denied the Ruah! Perhaps, then, the INSPIRATION, the HOLY CHARISM OF INTELLECT will still be within their grasp, even apart from his devekut, which he had thought impossible to break, and which he was certain was the source of their remarkable spiritual acceleration to now, for which the Mali'im were not predisposed. Now, if only they knew to listen! But there's hope, just a little bit of hope, that we might not be so over, that it wasn't over at all, that we were, in actuality, more back than we ever had been before. 

 

If they can manage the chozer b'teshuvah. So long as they don't kill him in the mean time, by compounding the issue. With a little bit of grace, a miracle here or there, they might just make it yet. If the Deity can slap some sense into them, or if one of His servants, Man or Angel or otherwise could do it for them, they might just make it!

 

 

 

But until then, the Flepir was slipping. The Flepir body, blood and soul seemed to kick into action its hitherto dormant system of immunity and personal-self-preservation, whittling away at the mind, all things growing nonsensical once more, in a vain reaching for innocence and whimsy, known super-cures for spiritual and bodily doom alike. "The death of divination," said Elim-- or was it that Enlad fellow? WTf did he mean by that? ill show him the death of idvivination when i SMASH HIS HEAD with SAINT CAIUS' HOLY NOOBSMASHE-- and so it went on... 

 

 

Edited March 24 by Fleeperpriest

[Endovelicus 610]

 

Efrayim had been busy at work, copying a new set of scriptures in the proper Safedi script, when, as always, Callahan had barged in, interrupting Efrayim Rabbeinu's beautiful calligraphic work of art. Nonetheless, the Rabbi placed down the quill and looked up, awaiting for the Tzaddik to unload whichever spiritual issue burdened him now. As Callahan spoke, Efrayim was satisified, 'Ah, yes, a simple matter for once, unlike with Raguk Tahareinu' he thought, and so, for such a simple question, he gave an equally simple answer. Callahan departed, and Efrayim thought him satisified, for when Callahan was not satisified he argued and kvetched, and so the Safedi Rabbi smilled, grabbing his quill once more, unware of the Kohen's unraveling mental state as he scribbled the next passage.

[Wizry 358]

Spoiler

i think levy's finally lost it

 

[Trenchist 548]

Fr. Elim did not at first know what it was all about. He met Cellah stupefied, rambling.

It took some minutes until it sunk onto him. The Malinite poison, the profanity. Those words that, for all their falsity, carried such a power of sordidness.

 

He could not read past the first words of that sinistee letter. Oh, the folly...

 

This is just like that tale in the apocrypha... "You were meant to destroy the Malinites, not join them! Bring Light to the elfs... not doom them."

 

Was there hope?

 

...