Reality is such a pliable thing. On the day that we open our eyes and greet the world yesterday is already ancient history; the childhoods of our parents might as well be the rise of the Roman Empire. In our developmental fog the off hand remarks of our elders become the pillars that construct the scaffolding of our minds. As we grow and collect more beliefs we become so transfixed on holding the columns of the self together that we glue our eyes to the awning above upon which our perceptions lay as shards of a mirror bundled together by angel hair, one instant of friction and the twine will snap. We overlook the chain that chokes our necks and binds us to those very supports and in this struggle we remain blind to the world beyond us.
The secrets of twisting the canvass on which our reality is drawn were forgotten so long ago that they had already vanished before the last lost society had come and gone. The remaining whiffs of its memory had its user’s named witches and in fear of how our secrets might have freed them from their open air prisons the uninitiated masses burned those memories alive, but the tome from which their magic tricks emanated would survive in the ashes of the betrayed to be buried along with their remains. Since that time a world has been built on top of it and below it still resides, the realm that I created and to which I will forever be tethered, for now I am written upon the folds of the universe; this is how my message met the six.
Beneath the vail of consciousness untethered you will find a colored tree, its hue will be a representation of your own soul. From this tree there will hang an ornament of glass that is stronger than any alloy now known to you for it has not been forged through fire and furnace, but through the will of life alone. Be not concerned with the means of its conception for the spellbinding trinket is merely an illusion. The tree, the key, your bedroom, your school, your possession, your world; all merely a conduit for minds to interact and exchange ideas – this is the true currency of the spirit, all else matters no more than matter.
When you approach the arboreal wonder you will find an adornment upon its branches that channels lightening from the pearlescent sphere at your core and sends electricity surging to your fingertips - this impulse will bring you to pluck the tool from its nest. The key is the fruit of knowledge, it has grown as you have and it was born to be grasped in your hand. The Red bears the mark of Warrior, strong of will and slight of trepidation; Orange is the mark of the Sage's ravenous mind; the boundless loyalty of the Martyr is marked with Blue; the sensitive Bard will hold the Green; the Seer who parts the veil that separates worlds will be granted the Violet mark; the Captain will be granted the Aqua-Marine. Once the burden has been accepted you will be anointed as a key bearer - a designation not given lightly or without reason and one that you, however you might feel about your own faculties, are well worthy of.
Once you have accepted your station you will walk down a long hallway and though for a time it will seem unending you will be too enraptured by paintings of fantastical lands and inhuman creatures that line its uncanny walls to calculate the length of your travels. If you turn back at this point you will be released from your obligations never to be visited again. If you reach the end of the line you will meet a woman with the head of a toad and long, cloth adorned feet. She will be wrapped in a cape flowing with murals not dissimilar to the images upon the walls of the previous corridor and you will realize that the depictions you had seen before were not drawn upon a flat canvass. There she will reveal to you that her name is Raika.
Raika is my name. As the millennia pass I struggle to remember the moniker and if I someday misplace it I know not if I will morn its loss. Raika they dubbed me - Chief Priestess of the Magyr-Myral of the Dream-like Valley just beyond the boundaries of the Eternal Kingdom of Toru-don. Author the Reath, a land known in the folktales and mythologies of planet Earth as the Beast-Realm and captive to the jealous hold of my own creation. Within the Reath a crisis is abrew and when it bubbles up it will undoubtedly boil over into the world of Kings and Queens. Your world.. All this I will explain within the realm between realms and once you awaken your story will begin.
Gabriel’s Journal 9/12/2022
I had a dream last night. I should call it a nightmare, but I wasn’t scared. There was a man who was bigger than life itself with a golden staff and a black cape. I couldn’t make out any of his finer details, he was too far away, yet he was standing over me. Somehow I couldn’t move. Bodies littered the floor, they were grotesque and misproportioned, they were bloody and beastly, abominations that ridicule human life in just the way it deserves to be ridiculed. As the king of the dead rose to his feet a mountain throne rose with him until he was standing with his cape spread wide casting a sound, black penumbra over the barren battlefield and all at once the limp monstrosities that surrounded me opened their eyes and with the breath of hell let out a ear-shattering and distorted scream.
Their furor unburdened my naked feet and on their pain I floated toward the shadow lord as he held his glorious scepter toward me, rays of wonder outlining his silhouette and raining down upon my clammy skin. I grasped his gleaming life-line and in my hands, miles above a crimson ocean, it became a golden key – then my Emperor spoke.
“Begin my work. Herald my return. Sit upon my throne.” As his voice boomed like thunder through the sky above us and seared his commands in burning red letters upon my brain my commandant’s hand cradled my heart and the vigorous organ refused to beat unless he played symphonies upon it. I have no mother and I have no father, he is my pulse. I was born in the eyes of the Beast-King. Through his eyes I will become the Beast-King...
Comments (0)
See all