The Soothsayer - Phantasmagoria

It's that gentle odd feeling that bubbled from the hot soup of your infantile fear as your head began to whirl with questions surfacing, when one was lost. But no, the questions didn't pop as they swelled round and full, like those darn bubbles. They wouldn't go away. They were the wraiths that haunted you with that gentle odd feeling in the very first place. To remind your feeble comprehension that you were indeed lost. And maybe, you would feel beneath the subplot of your fear, that you might be lost for good. Sometimes it might not be such a bad idea too, you know? If you are lost forever, then you are not lost at all. You are just searching. Something you might want to tell yourself as the time flew and you were lost.

Everyone got lost every now and then. Some strayed from the course, while others got themselves lost in attempt to learn something valuable. So one might want to know what happen in the first place, when one started to disappear in unfamiliarity and details. That could be important. The horrors that ensue later on would mostly determine by how you lost yourself in the very first place.

Like most things desperate, getting lost tugged feverish on blind faith. Vvael was in a forest filled with blinding lights. The jungle was raised from earth to the starless night with bronze shone crucifixes. Some dozen blue steel of the crosses bore the housing of the crows with yellow eyes and coats so dark that they glistered in nefarious darksome. They peered at Vvael in bored interest, their yellow eyes flickering. On blind faith that you thought you knew how to tell the difference in details. On blind deciphering wisdom. Vvael held onto to the rusty wheel of his wheelchair. Because things changed and shifted in this place. They always did. And that made finding his way challenging to date. At some point of his travel, the metal trees of crucifixes bent around and over to form the grim designs of the human hearts. They whimpered at the mercy of the midnight breeze. You know how they look when things bent and twisted. They always have this hole in the middle. The darkness that ate them empty from the core.

They were lonely. He was lonely. Darkness of the loneliness.

And he was just a boy.

Vvael bit back his attention. Distraction was very dangerous in places that shifted and turned. Higelot understood that too. Heaven was drastically altered. So much that it could be described as wounded. Virtue was the highest code of honor among God's creation. The purest of chasity. And with virtue, one could never be afraid. Higelot, the host championing Virtues felt fear for the first time in his existence. And absolute fear, in case if one had never felt it in his entirety, was both physiological and intrinsically fascinating. Your guts burden, your temples moisten and your scalp stung. A dirty mix of sweetness dipped in coal black cauldron of anticipation and when one really taste it, the hint of the bitter sweetness was euphorically claustrophobic and apocalyptic.

There were sand everywhere. No buildings, sanctuaries and no songs. The Silver City from a distance was supposed to appear like a crystal crown of brilliance. The utopia. Now it was buried in grayish sand and ashes. It filled up to Higelot's ankles. Higelot tried to look to the stars for bearings. But the stars were long gone, along with the songs. Higelot unfurled his wings and pierced his flight. He could not afford to get lost in times like this.

Vvael was ushered in a flash into this exquisite room among many rooms in the great mansion. Vvael rolled himself to the dusty window and peered out of the shades. He saw the view of the town. The ebony forestation of crucifixes. And an empty field of dead petals.

He must have often peered out from here. The corner of his room. All he could do for the days. Watching people across the streets. Watching healthy children playing in the field. Kicking a ball around. Running in summer scent.

For many years in his establishment in the mortal realm, Vvael thought he studied enough and understood how easily distractions could change people's lives. He witnessed eager boys walking into his bar for the very first time in their lives, turned out bitter and scornful drunk twenty years later. He saw old conies reminiscing their previous lives and guessing the what ifs with many bottles of intoxication. Vvael thought he knew all there were to know about the human distractions. Until now. Vvael was in a human mind and learnt that he had underestimated the threshold of distractions that a human mind could bear. Eilert Swane's mind shifted and shifted. He was lonely, frightened, lost, sad and involved in other emotions that crippled him as a person. Outwardly, he just appeared to be a frail rich boy in a wheelchair, but interiorly, he was engulfed by the crippledom of the ability to feel otherwise.

If being lonely was the only the thing that he could only feel. Then he wished he could stop feeling. Anything. Such negativity was not uncalled for. For Young Master Swane had long decide that he could never feel happy, no matter what else. Maybe if he could walk. Maybe not. Maybe it wasn't about his crippledom in the first place.

It was his heart all along.

All along.

While Vvael was a watcher, the observer, Higelot was the hunter. Instead of trying to make sense of the stories and metaphors, Higelot pounced on details and ran on his instinct. Among the sandy rubbles and the void of serenity, Higelot picked up a scent of familiarity. A distinct, yet faint scent of corruption that had not existed in the Silver City for thousands of years until now, when everything falls apart. Higelot hunted the scent.

Vvael rolled onto the empty street. A thunder groaned and some lights among the low hung clouds. The atmopshere was crushing with a depressive hue. The town was in a ruin. Run down shophouses, cottages broken into and decreased garden beds. Brown ships anchored near the bay and the sea was but a puddle of mud in the ground. A divergence of three pathways in the intersection of the town's fountain. The three statues erected in upon the stone of the dried fountain each pointed a different direction. The angel with grey chalky marble wings, the devil with broken horns and the boy without legs. Vvael reached over to touch the boy statue and the head crumbled softly to blowing dust.

It was his heart all along.

It began to rain in Heaven. The Silver City got its fair share of drizzle from time to time, but this rain was nothing like anything ever existed anywhere, even in the world of Man. The rain washed away the sand into cream and flowing cement. The rain washed away the dignified silence of the ruin of the most important places in all existences into a maelstrom of rushing nosies and rumblings of all creatures as if they broke their backs in a wicked trap and had to die crying. Not unlike Hell. The rain was washing away the scent. Higelot sped. He was struggling against the profound nature of this storm. His wings pained in unimaginable places and shapes. He could not afford to lose the scent. The scent so close to the source. The problem and the end. Higelot tumbled to the white and gray wash of the destruction. His wings caked in rain and dirt. He had to get to the scent before it was lost to the rain for when he too would be lost in this myriad of lost paradises and shards of brewing turmoils. Not when the world depended on it. Not when the hearts of all existences depended on it.

It was near the dried fountain, they hit him across the jaw and sent his wheelchair sprawling onto the asphalt. The folks were made of clay. They had no eyes, just unhinged jaws of soil. They giggled like frightened children. One of them gotten over Vvael and started strangling him with sheer force. The fingers dug like knives, cutting into his throat. Vvael fought and tried to tear the clay face of his assailant. All he could hear was giggles. The yellow dirt scratched away by Vvael's nails and revealed the grinning face of The Adversary.

'Samuel?' Vvael asked in chokes and tears.

'Sshh...' Coaxed the Lightbringer dressed in clay, 'Less talking. More dying. Child.' With quick a flash in the Morningstar's eye, 'Remember, little cherub, Remember you picked this route.'

'I'm not sorry! I'm not sorry!' Cried Vvael in short, quick breaths.

'Love. Hush.' Grinned Lucifer, his wings unfurled. 'You knew this day will come. Each of you knew. That I will return with my hands all over the brown nose necks of you cowards. Where is He now? Beg Him for your salvation. Beg Him to make me go away.'

He was angry. He was very angry. At the world, at himself and his meaningless existence.

The Lightbringer squeezed his grip harder, 'What's wrong with me? What's wrong with choices? What's wrong with self-belief that you could get stronger then they, than He believes in you? I am the example of free will. I am the Epoch. I am free.'

'Samuel...' Cloaked Vvael, 'We already had free will. We chose not to fall.'

Lucifer roared, 'Do not attempt to tell me what you thought you already knew. Because you don't! You wouldn't end up in such perilous state if you had.'

Higelot found the root of the scent. The rain crashed on. He found himself square at where His throne was before it was moved to the sanctuary. After Yahwen cast Angel Samuel, captain of heavenly hosts down, there was a hole in which the light wouldn't shine. It led straight down, along the fall, along the grim path in which they fell. The hole continued to burn in eternity and they had to moved His throne. The place in which the greatest confrontation acted on no longer had the blessing of His grace. Higelot found the hole and it continued to burn.

The First of The Fallen went for the kill, but instead he flew and was tore apart. The mud blew in rocky pieces and his grin smeared in the wind. Vvael felt for his burning throat and saw who rescued him, it was Suicides the Zephr. Suicides pulled Vvael hastily to his wheelchair.

'But he is your lord...' Choked Vvael.

'Please, angel. Surely you don't take faith even in such counterfeit.' Hissed Suicides as he butchered the rest of the clay people. 'A divergence in his mind. Maybe more. The influences.'

Vvael pointed to the chalk angel on the fountain, 'Kepharel. I can understand. But the devil?'

Suicides heaved and pushed Vvael's chair away, 'The devil is inside everyone these days.'

It's God. It's God's will that he is the herald. And through him, faith and redemption will reignite and the world will once again earn His trust and land a place in His embrace after death. Eilert traveled far and wide, through the ice and the fire. He will get there. For his life will be meaningless without His message. And one more person he reached, another one repented. Eilert would scale treacherous mountains and swim across seas to the end of the world if this was what He wanted. With the legs given by the Him, he would go to the end of the universe if he had to, for in Him, he renewed his faith in things that were thought to ease inside him, and Eilert Swane was happy for change. A purposeful life was a lived one. Regardless of the endless despises and the beatings he received, Eilert received them earnestly like food to the soul. Each spit made him stronger, each punch made him wanted to preach more. He was happy.

They found him. They found Eilert Swane wrapped in a warm cocoon in the ground of sulphur and diamonds. In an underground coffin under the scalp, Kepharel kept Eilert's conscious alive. The rouge angel couldn't get rid of the mere mortal, for Kepharel was no more than a whisper in his ears than his own will over his body. And crippled Cherubim and the Zephr was right. Eilert Swane, The Fire Monster, The Fire Spirit, The Soul Eater was something more than a puppet manipulated by a simple plot of overthrowing Hell. The properties and the purpose was underestimated by both the forces of the dark and the light.

From the moment of their entry to the Inferno, Eilert could no longer will his body. He was caged in his own mind, witnessing the war. But Eilert anticipated that. Though he loathed the rouge angel from robbing him of his destiny, Eilert surrendered. Because he knew and saw the greater plan. He was no longer just the herald to his people. He was more.

The end is drawing near.

The ground shook and bellowed. Something was happening to the Fire Monster and they had to be quick. Suicides dug Eilert Swane's bended composure up and sat him onto Vvael's lap on the wheelchair. Suicides pushed them in a hurry. The skies ripped apart, sucking all lights and sounds into the darkness.

Vvael asked Eilert, 'Are you alright? We need you to get a grip over your powers and stop this madness.'

In gasping breaths, Eilert smiled, 'It's too late. The end is nigh.'

Oh, he know he is right.



To Be Continued...