...to the man through the door, did you get me anything? Knight of sawdust and grit, keeper of continents and wielder of seasons, first-rays traveler generous with skill, scant few born to match this love against odds, perception be damned. Knowledge in a rotating frame, alive in the drift, chimerical galaxies extending, textured, dichotomous, character a well by which all are distinguished, that spring of deeds. No instruction for a life unafraid yet fearing not, teaching that half measures make victims and mirth is salve of open wounds, to finish what one starts and neither borrower nor lender be, to beware declaration and respect those that care, to see what they do in our name, errors of attribution and dim roads unfolding in a never-ending story. Stream of presents and playgrounds, digging in sand, nighttime swims and candy hunts, fishing on a raging sea, one more treat always within reach. Dreams made real, strung like pearls by industry, fortunate to explore, to skate the ocean, the biggest gift a rock steadfast, a weathered bell, the rooting out of veneer and pride, instilled in each a treasured heart, integrity, discipline, confidence. What strength to know defeat yet not be deterred, a lion unconcerned by tears. Yes, my son, I got you everything...

Coming to, dragged, not ungently. Familiar mist brushing my skin like down, distinction hid from energy, from element, forces of the cosmos made. A man pulling me through sand or brush I cannot tell, so dense the haze. Beside me a flash of diamond, a cat of untamed countenance. Its coat colorless and clear, mined from notion, a loping splendor, a tiger made unbreakable. My guide brings me to stand, a man of arrow and earth, notch and curve worn smooth by time. He is blind yet looks through me, taking my measure, saying nothing yet asking what kind of person I am, and how much will I come to understand. A look flaying in its search, vanity brought to light, a wheel on provenance and prestige, on virulence, a rallying call beset by blame, striking conviction and its difference. Eyes that seek to know, who am I to dare? He looks to the cat, says, “Should we keep this one, or will he be like the rest, a disciple of action, a messenger, bringing more mayhem yet?” To me he says, “You want to know why you are here. That’s simple isn’t it? You no longer want to live in a dream. You want to speak your mind, to mark the others. You also want to know what I see. That too is simple. Darkness, and stars.”

He readies his bow, says, “Steady, here they come.” The cat springs into the fog and the man fires at teapot become tempest, a band of drones with single goal and that to end our solitude. We skirmish under pulsing skies, garnet flares that flank and drive, the enemy our medium, aspects of ourselves in flight. “Behind you!” I shout. The man turns and grabs a drone and slams it into battleground. It screeches, bites, again he slams it down. It spasms, and stills. The mist recedes, anomalous, our foes disappeared. The man stuffs his prize into a bag. “I had not been able to catch one,” he says with a smile, “You may be useful yet.” He tightens the string and looks visionless at the firmament, as though perceiving existence there, equity and pathos in song, an ethereal compendium reflecting our world, these attitudes. We go to a tree in the distance, a sign for which there is no road. The cat stretches out and we join suit, our backs to the night, the bag tied fast to hardwood limb. I gauge the branch, “It will hold,” I say. “Famous last words,” the man replies.

The bag rocks and from within comes captured words, “I feel your flaws, ignore them, suppress.” . . . “Silence!” the man says. He turns to me, “Kill it. There is no value in its speech, just ploys designed to claim your mind. Its prattle nurtures compulsion, doubt, the part of us that latches onto grand design and graceless tale, the lurid and spectacular.” . . . “I don’t think I can. What right have I to end its life?” From the bag once more, “Yes, become pious, become until no heat remains.” A knife flies from the man’s hand and into the bag. From it spreads an iris, time-lapsed and crimson. The man says, “To give it quarter is not love but fear. It is harasser of the weak, a huckster of alternatives, sticking like a teasing name. It would turn the present into mere shuffling of the cards, your thoughts polished and reformed. Trust nothing, but trust me in this. I have spent a lifetime being proud of my fellows but not their flags. To side with some excludes the rest. Is patriotism not the celebration of difference? In theory, but tribes remain. I understood and lost my sight, denied the throne by longer view. Even so, it was a gift, to hear what is said yet know what is meant, a language where one cannot lie. A blessing made acute as so few share this agony. Most lose their grip, every step a trap, coping with extinction’s threat by hurting all with even hands. To see this in a friend, hardships held past bearing, is burden unlike any other. I see hope spring forth in every greeting, each a disguised call for love. When verve transforms to manic glee, a roaring need to freeze what grows, we must recall that they are us. You will know them by their confidence, their creeds, a people made caricature by masks of angst and reverence. I have vowed to play with a full deck, to press those that say our nature is a sin, who divide our house thereby. I will not ignore my obligation to experience, nor will I tolerate the propagation of hysteria and slander of the possible. If we do not stand our vote is cast, a right unclaimed is right withdrawn. We were brought here on the shoulders of giants, and if we fail all of life will serve as witness. But take heart my friend, it is not too late, just almost so.”

The stars are few as sunset’s dawn, spare against a jeweler’s cloth. The man builds a fire, says, “I once heard that stars are echoes of light, remnants of long-dead constellations, and if one could journey into that beyond they would not find heaven, but darkness. What do you say?” I consider, reply, “Stars remind me that the rules are not mine. Those I love will suffer, and nothing I do will change the fact.” He smiles, “Be careful, language is true sorcery, whether spoken to others or oneself. Words are the scaffolding upon which we drape the entirety of our experience, select them carefully, and your beliefs more carefully still. Good and evil vie, the currency they seek none other than the weight of our convictions, no difference beheld in writ of God or man aloud. Terror and beauty seen in each, in a people broken by love, and its lack. Heresy, tragedy, testament, all prevail. Tell me, do you believe in God?” I look at the cat, its claws, and say, “I hope for God.” . . . “If one is undecided it simply means they cannot face the accord of their soul, indecision is avoidance of a thing already known. Perhaps you are afraid of being rendered expendable without doubt, the sanctity of life seen for what it is, alien yet familiar, no path to its secrets yet unceasing in tempting us to try. Surrendering to that is to forfeit everything, distanced ever further from one’s companions, from experience in common. As I am sure you have found, people always fear those with less to lose.” I look to the mountains, unattainable as insight, and say, “So, you believe in God then. Do you pray?” The man studies me as though the question demands not only answer but reply that might not be taken to the wrong end of a life. The fire reflects his eyes, more alive than any flame. He says, “How long can one stay in paradise until it is paradise no more? Can one enjoy their favorite dish if eaten for eternity? I pray that God cannot tire of love. But if such is the case, we must find goodness in pain, or all is lost. If you believe the gears grind in unison, a codified and vengeful force, or that all is bare coincidence, a web of caroms with death at its center, then you carry a coin in your pocket and flip it at every turn. One side anger, the other despair. In the meantime love stands waiting, soft and delicate and not in need. I do not pray for pardon or ease of burden. That is the only sin, to make oneself a slave. I pray as I swim, naturally, conversing with the water that is life around us, talking as to a friend, equal and grateful. For those choosing otherwise, their belief shines clear in attempting to keep the world at bay, imagining their doom around every corner, and thinking it a noble act. Rest assured, it is not. Such is living suicide, a path cauterized by fear of a dragon we have by the tail. Are you the least important being in the universe, or the most? Which is more terrifying, knowing either is so, or the surety that this is the choice in every moment?” . . . “I wish I knew.” The man spreads his arms, speaking as much to the stars as to me, “If wishes were horses beggars would ride, and all would be revealed. Belief, prayer, God, do these matter, or is it simple as how we treat each other before the certainty of death?” The fire cools, the question drifts. The mountains do not respond.

I gather my cloak to augment what gives neither warmth nor comfort, a projecting veil, a blind on the sun. Where can I turn where notion and its very mechanism oppose, where harking to inner realms is but conceit and mind not paid becomes advantage, behind each day an endless night? Could it be the tyrant’s agents are not preachers but pilgrims? Will my stopping them bring further loss, some greater pain, the cast of my bearing warding those that might help, not in quelling unease but in sharing this thin broth of trial? Are these travels leading closer to understanding, or further away? I am torn between knowing my motivation and knowing it too well. Such is the magnificent array embedded where moth and rust consume. I have seen little evidence that the bonfire will feed revenge, yet I scorn the tears of upheaval and shifting goals that engulf this expression, the blaze inside my only measure as I seek to ratify injustice on this side of the shimmering door. I do not fear the impulse, only the jump. Does the man beside me feel the same, or is that a distance too far? What mistakes of perception bead the glass? Try as I might to commune there is no hold strong enough to withstand a run from sentiment to purpose in a world of cruelty and affability by turns. I feel the unseen clock as it tallies the cost of waiting, of keeping change at bay, a karmic witness noting every dalliance as it keeps perfect ledger of rejection and dissent, vanity and pettiness balanced against the fallacy of boundless opportunity. Must I avoid the fringes of consciousness, the tug of spontaneity, the agony of arriving without invitation? How is that worth the spareness of joy, and what say have I in the weighing? Is such a place to be found or decision to be made, and is there time to entertain the alternative—a burning cage holding the soul focused inward, the roasting of its flesh made palatable, so used to the flame—hell recast as dying and meeting there the man I could have been? A synthesis that boils as it comforts by saying all that arises passes away, the leafless tree, this lingering night. If not for those that bear this strain, who is mercy for? We pack up without a word, and together move on.

The sphere follows us, luminous and black and proximity unsure, that object of hunger and root of calling found, celestial revenant never too close, yet hovering like a spell. Wishing it down is spark I cannot coax to passion for fear it will consume. I am well-armed but ill-equipped, it would surely expose my frailty, these hollow threats. I have battled and been broken, warred and been drowned. Having seen the prowess of heroes I know I cannot compare to this master of tides. Is its surface smooth like ideas of hurt, or hedge-mazed and deep, creased and layered like folds in a crown, like schemes lit from behind? Maxims itch like constellations, glittering over travail and gulf, beginning and end, part and whole. We rove on under idyll dome, the silent nebulae, the still and rippling flow, blue-black and rich, imagination revealed in a night autumn sky. The cat circles, its hide holding each twist of heaven in relief, a conflux in shining reflection. The man says, “Our enemy is patient, waiting until our hopes run high by auspicious events latched onto in absence of their corollary, sound without pause, objects without space. Only then will they come in number. But fear not, the task at hand will keep us sane.” He winks, a blind man's habit. The mountains approach, sienna-slate and of a piece. I follow as would sequitur to competence, the sphere fading, attention fused by hazard's truth. A gorge cuts our path, a perfect vacuum with ropes suspending its extent and those fortified by willow and grass, by wagered limits, gestures of perspective lost. I look over the edge and consider infinite fathoms of mind, a universe in parallel, accessible if I only knew where to look, the same as here except all are loved and no army stands, a place where uncertainty is accepted and anguish is but a muse. The cat traverses the rope as though born to it and my guide grabs it next, moving hand over hand, deliberate and strong. It is my turn now. I take a breath and pull, heady with dusk, a floating vision, the distant below indifferent and ready. What meaning in this? No, keep pulling, past pain and introspection, inch along for inch of life. Almost, almost, now, there. My panting meets a humble home, windows open to invite the current of handled tests and sorrow's ordeal, crucible and curse at bay, a freshness conferred by order, by granting of rest. “Welcome,” the man says, “They will come in time. Shall we play a game while we wait?”

We sit, rules plain and board set, pleasure found in thrust and counter. Flank, defend, fortress and flag. “Royalty awaits,” the man says, “it all depends on how badly you want the bishop.” Bruised, rebuilt, sacrifice, advance. “So, it has come to innuendo then,” I say with a smile, “how the mighty have fallen.” He stretches and yawns, says, “Stalemate once again, yet, we have both won. Obstinance and grim resolve are cankers exorcised by play, death cheated in suspension of angst, our mutual revelry a pacifier to misgiving, a dressing that soothes trepidation and wish. Even so, time will not be denied. Let us light the torches of war.” From twilight's end comes pleading sobs, bawling and lament. “Ignore their crocodile tears,” he says, “that is where our footing is lost. Stand fast, they will come. See, there, in the mist. Let’s give them what they came for.” His bow conjured, arrows clear and whistling, my weapons awake, amalgams of ruin sallying forth to meet all manner of nightmare's arrangement. We meet the crush with savagery, that sundry mythos of havoc and beast, agreed in presumption to judge, to assess and balance the enchantments of long ago, of ships and sand and waterfalls. I shift between all and aspect, between glances and winking out. Does destruction castigate our maker's wish, or are the wounds of enemies made ours with every monster cut to size? Are such thoughts worthy or tragic miscalculation, a life wasted in their embrace? Being patient takes so long. The assault rages as we turn from mere companions to friends born of the same undying love that lives to oppose, inspiring to precedent of ferocity and goodness, to sympathetic smiles slitting the throat of reason. A final surge and recess, our victory one of unity in service, communion claimed by what consumes. We chronicle the damage done, weigh our alliance against agents of convention. If veracity endures beyond a sharp tongue, if what we are would cease should guilty parties wane, if narrow escapes and valiant deeds change nothing, the genocide of potential ever-present, what gift prophecy? I lay down and examine the embers for some dark wind to blame, yet all remains, inchoate and wheeling.

...close to the surface but not quite so, weft of light on vestige of a ruin's passing, fleeting glimpse of aged stone, etch and aim awash in haze and meaning soaked in flow waylaid, a henge-work floating, spinning by. How to respond when no tree raps the windowpane, just troubled moons, lean and flickering, soaring where discipline and prowess melt all that is required. A jump to freedom, the way paved smooth as fresh-blown glass, rising higher, a path aired to sweat and favor, to compound eyes, discordant mare of nightshade's weep, small and deadly and light on its feet, like a dream, or a secret. It glistens, pale and gold, thick-tailed sting segmented and swaying, a mocking cure for pangs of existence. Whether hunger is symptom or disease I care not as I tear it in two, eating its velvet underside, drinking it down. A piquing squeal mediates all that cannot be said about these moments, the seam like footsteps on the roof of our souls. If wish becomes mute then all I need is sweetness of pain, it is enough...

...there is a sadness equal to love. It begrimes with residue of endings, imprecise as squalor it layers in sheets of fever and a plight finely tuned, an hourglass acquired by ambition and grief, a chime telling us to witness, flesh and bone, sinew and scar. No cause given to justify until life is extinguished by what I hunt, that which hunts me. I am told to burn the prophets of happiness, that misery is my right, the sphere’s consummation, that cyst on back of beyond, a miracle of embitterment, of all that renders our hearts. What folly to debate its scope, its crests and breaks erected in honor of that which hides the killing blow, a pole star deaf to evidence. What gift sufficient for zodiac of stone, what group when joined could ably turn it away, that fell satellite? I twist and writhe with limbs ungoverned, the past locked in rooms by those I tried befriend, heat and friction taking sides. Would they have brought me closer to heaven than these valleys, these plains? My voice finds strength in recall, in anger at being told of injustice so profound it will never again allow innocence to breathe. I challenge the sky, the descending blackness, when does it stop? The response comes in snaking whips of flaw and ruin, hell's own chains sensing all I dare dream, violent in their scrutiny. They sway and twitch as if to ask, how would I change with one day left? A secret event, a horror gliding at speed, swirling like an allegation, like smoke in a bowl. As before, so now, running at height of fear, a trembling swiftness on stagnant paths, blueprints shown to evanesce, instruments unsound in their surety…

The demon is upon us, clawing at my only friend. He offers protest as one might fend the planet's tilt, breaking against it as bottles on a pier. It hisses and tears and the man falls, tortured by his very skin and the unfamiliar forms that dying might take, those built slow with agony, brick by brick. He is wounded to the core, every gash a carving of realms that one day might have been enjoyed, perspectives lost with each drop of blood, leaking a potentiality never to be realized while our torment stands quivering, its surface an eager mob, a state of discrepancy in the arch of its spine, its existence pejorative to loveliness. It looks at me and through, wet-heeled and mocking, and jumps the wall separating anger from the unknown beyond. The cat pursues it without thought, alternatives sacrificed in a single act, its doubt foregone by devotion. The man looks at me and forms a word, red-flecked and bubbling, “Stay.” A lyric on the rails of serenity traveling byways of kindnesses I have known, but if malice given form leads to my goal it would be blasphemy to remain. I steel and jump and hope the demon has not gone far but far enough that I need not face it. The man strains to stand, mauled yet defiant, a longing there, as if to tell me that companions are our highest expression, the one legitimate form. But his body fails, entrail and passion soaking the sand. I close my heart to his struggle, hanging between love and duty, brother and burden. To leave risks dying, to stay the same. I run, but hear him still, from beyond the cold, beyond the wall, and know I owe him everything, “Brother, I cannot think of what to tell you that is not already, somehow, silently understood. The universe is hardly understood as we apply the human construct of time to an entity that is timeless. It just is. I could never measure or articulate everything you are, everything you mean to me—it just is.”

I search for communion in this wasteland, a derelict hominid passing creek beds and brocades that swallow my trail, the draining years. Legs like pillars stride in the distance, towering and equanimous beings with bellies brushing height of clouds, if clouds there are, for above me swirls only dust. They seem oblivious and bring forth empathy for my exiguous life whose order of existence cannot be known but by relative size to figments of antiquity, for that they must be, what other could survive the complications of history, arising from some latent period having bested the forces at play in a cosmos too large to care, for they to matter. What do they fear, these inhabitants of spectacle? Is fear province of the wild, what of sorrow? Naivete does not bring peace. Even that of which the sleeper is unaware can bite, in quantity destroy. I come upon a field barren as the rest save for statues of titans locked in battle, their foes unseen and purpose one I cannot guess other than its importance to some long ago record of obedience to choices made. Among them are champions clad in no guard but tendon and wit, legends all, olympic in scale. Are they defense, a warning? Or are they warriors come before, failed in my same errand in a realm that admits no bargaining? What blow will not be absorbed by enormity? What can I offer that they have not in crusades beyond counting? I would just as soon close this faucet of emotion, a source rich in sadness and prophetic of defeat, my disgrace bared by savage and knight, gauntlet and mail, horn and plume. All that remains depicted in cinder. This is the riddle, how does one become larger than life when fixed in time? To masquerade may be blasphemy but is the only path to repay misery dispensed by totem and providence. I wish to lessen these footsteps, shrink them conversely to the borders of my mind. Is being small the difference? Is that the power of ideas, seeds, a passing smile? A voice comes, true as breath. It is the demon, the night itself speaking its piece. It says, “You are carrying water to the sea. I am inescapable, prepared in all times and places for the fight you cannot win. Live in defeat and live you will. Renounce your struggle. Join the countless.” If only I could tell my friend how much he was loved, to pour straight the joy that once assailed my heart. Will there be another chance or is harm irrevocable, opportunities left on the table piled high such that the structure of destiny has already sagged, fallen into the never was under tax of occasions taken for granted? Why did I not express these sentiments of admiration, am I corrupt as the tyrant I seek? I step further into the waste, the endings to come.

The demon’s tail weaves dread and confidence, a lightless odium on a dry and wanting stage. Toward it strides the sorcerer, the ghost of fury steaming, the angle of his bearing inviting anguish as if the more he hurts the stronger he will become. He stops in front of the demon, and as though most painful act in deep store of such acts, he says, “You had your chance and let him go, another head start granted. Finish the job, or I will.” The demon stares, meeting flesh with unhurried regard. In time it replies, “You assume much. Seek the cause and vision blurs. On what can you rely to see further than now? What future where you are damned or saved with surety, from where does your conviction come? You conjure weapons to be right for a day, what then? Think of the first to have seen me, death in every mirror, stalked by fading glow. I taste it anew in all beings, and each the same. Your next breath may draw failure of the heart or knife unseen. What then is your greatest treasure, to accept or deny? Explain me and you will stumble, put faith in me and your regret will last forever.” The demon vanishes, yet the sorcerer feels its presence still, the world's very frame, a shiver of elation like a random flaw, unrecognized but by grief and its children. He wonders why death is sacred, carried like some draconic phylactery bestowed by powers unquestioned. Could he not be the first to live forever? He looks at empire of loss and knows to see it as final is to concede defeat, that the price of immortality is for another to take his place. To wield his fate as their own.

Limits of fantasy wrap choice in panoptic layers of half-truth and pretext, inquiry turned to feed on its own. How far have I come since the splintering of universe and aim? Should I go gently, living skin-deep where all exist by dictate of consent? Is that peace? Motion without progress, span without growth, if only distance spoke of gain. A mask appears in my path, travertine metaphor of doctrine and violence, a disguise to harness the hurt I project. It speaks from the root of my mind, it says, “I have been with you from the start, my cloak your shield, my weapons your compass, your aches and tremors are my own.” There is much I do not know, like why intelligence serves dysfunction, and loyalty stifles so. Should they not condition strength, brace becoming? Instead they tire, abstracting ideals. The tension between what is and what could be, that is the worm within, the source of melancholy and control, living the end before it comes, clutching to remorse. How to release it, to understand? The mask answers, “You are not alone. The intolerant are unjust by virtue of conceit, travesty condoned by design, atrocity by conclusion. Yet this is not what the countless desire, to grasp for wholeness in labor and myth. The sphere awaits, that you cannot change. But you have seen the tyrant's devices, and by shattering those tourniquets on tenderness you can ease all burdens. Every act of resistance is one more stone in the base of your legacy, its shape brought into focus. Keep fighting. Lift the veil of maudlin existence. Wear me well, in battle and in victory.” I put it on with shaking hands, and there it tightens, a conflict petrified, a limpet shell, a windswept space separate and diminished, a third eye vandalized. I look toward the angry dawn, the seasons between, the yellow cast of biting suns. My jaw is a distant ache, a rictus grin, tear-blind and callow. Vainglorious these safeguards we chase with our enemies raucous in their hunt. Let no captor ply trade in comfort, let none that oppress find perch or purchase. I go now to fortune, to halt the march of malice and greed.

They stop me cold, repulsion and desire rising as one. The struggle of a spirit turned licentious in charcoal and heat, sex and rotting leaves. A rheum on vision they fill the horizon, loathing and wish in sculpted show, the queen astride leviathan. I stand in the rubble, rooted by invertebrate past, looking into eyes like firebrands, an origin I do not feel. They dissemble in whirlwind of judgments and labels, each a bloom in vase of malignance, contents spilled like stuttering gods, disinterred yet sanctifying nothing, neither soul nor honor venerated by obeisance, postures inciting my heart with waving hands and claims to creation, a masterpiece of control given form in hostility, all in vain. Consequence erupts and memory drifts into being, yet all is pacified by fresh beginnings, fugitive that locus, a composition of honesty and vaporous thereby, the end a new lease waiting if I could but tap into what was forgotten. Such is the paradox of means, strengthening the barbaric by the very fight against it. Still I try. Every move a claim to place, to know and influence, to map infinitude. What can I posit other than the tyrant’s turn to offense? Had I not intervened would they have been content to rest, to let the world turn as it may? What cunning where love is obscured by war, our freedom made fiction? I will not let it be. With mask pulled close the chase is on.

Existence without essence, a ghoulish footing in haunted wilderness, no gentle noticing this, the searching out of discrepancy between position and goal, status and wish, ambition an itch from the shallows, clandestine prism fracturing light from the distance to separate spirit from the thrilling enough. Here I crow, a warlord occupying seat of reverence, no honor in my bearing. Will I create a rock heavier than I might lift? Soon enough. Dealt a weak hand, bedecked by notions unfit yet played with brilliance, singular in knack, the commitment to fight unctuous in its advance, a liqueur tipped by entrance of passion, of sickness, each one wearing prankster's clothes. Portent comes in wisdom ignored, caprice pursued in streets of jeopardy where children chase balls of brightness and allure, the taste for revel sought irrespective of hazard until too late, too real, too soon. Lies successful by the momentum of their fictions, slow-dying shapes of order turned cartel of beauty, rumination and worry to follow, shrill and whistling, freshly born in seduction and loathing. This is shadow's plenty, a dialogue of thirst tongued through net of sophistry. What will that voice say other than wielding of cosmic image, a congerie of methods justified by distress, modest riches, strange contexts, the constituents of reality reared by certainty, an oasis and its palms brought low by skylark sport and flight from harm. Seek to defeat and defer thereby. A night of knives fused to obsession in dyad of hope and fear. Actions in the presence of greatness come to nothing but lethal parting of the ways. Eventually the decision must be made—is being kind to oneself to be cruel to others?

Want and aversion run on, mischief in their step, their feathered touch both sensuous and vile. From what do they fly? What ill is bred by urge and disgust? A nymph and druid chained, struggling against bonds of dim élan that rope each to one, no jailer left to loosen their hold, the operatives of avarice having ranged ahead to replicate the wending strands of indifference. Memory sings and consequence falls, desert flower and iron skies murdering without remorse and love far from my mind—these weapons my world—glittering like ore against bond and honored name, a poison wind uttering forever as though each were the last, as one must be. I grasp for other than sacrifice, a paladin splattered red, cutting for no more reason than it can be done. Dreams once bright curl by christening blows with no time to wish goodbye for the vigor of my affections. Finished, panting, unable to discern through swirling time the ghosts obscured by murmur. I am a passenger, beholding a scene that beggars thought, shelter and character slain, freed yet sundered by neglect, my fear having destroyed that which severs gods from the needs of their souls. I cannot process what my heart has become, this cavity of weakness, a millstone suffocating each new path by measures of hostility, joy diffused in aggregate, the truth of action. Nothing left but the dive into fire. Not long for this life but long enough to force fate's hand, to expose the vacuum of power, the prison where aspect glimpsed is but greater bondage still. At my feet an empire shattered, the sun and moon consigned to oblivion. Yet for this I cannot grieve, not when the shoots of conviction spring. The sorcerer must die.