Threnody on the Rise

I had spoken with a person this morn on the internetwork, which should never be done because conversations in that place are likely not to be with functional people, but a lesser version of themselves clinging to subjugation in delusional grandeur, we can blame this on their overlords imprinting the fascist cote, but this in turn requires them to be people insomuch our bystanding. Case in point. It had seemed her goal of our parley was an opposition to military realized only by her plan to release militants. Her idea of libertarianism was to release the demons, so I will call her Jezebel, as the demon of the same motive, until another claims the title, which may actually have been her, nonetheless.

I haven't eaten since the talk due to a hollowness, if you can imagine losing sight of darkness as the sunlight falls, then you can imagine me losing just a little more of my faith in humanity by her disturbing footing. Some discursive wretch with an idea of liberty being a freedom from necessities, from duty or responsibility, by sacrificing desire at the alter of ignorance. Needless to mention as is my favored tradition, I may abstain from that forum for a year, to see the way it bids me welcome to people with more of a mind. I do love a fight, perhaps hell on earth, as much as the next man, perhaps child in this world of monsters, but I do not seek to destroy someone something I have never fathomed. That is called hunting, the bloodlust, something that if never controlled is the habit of dementia, destruction in the form of growth, or perhaps the opposite phrasing, as any naive politician would have the world become.

What piqued my interest was the many reverses of reality, as if I was arguing with myself, so capable of such am I, on withered tether have I planted prisons of dreams and soldiers of grief in my psyche, lacking intrigue for such common pettiness. Beg your eyes that this, is no boundary of sundry failings, that truly borders are for the fiefdom the wolves and sheep have come to knowingly adore, farming people as animals stirs insatiable hungers unstoppable by element or risen storm, to keep walls with lies and promise skies infinite to any new arrival in the despotism and shellacked sincerity of inbred politicians, at the cost of any loss on the shoulders of the unborn, may that be the line you wish dissolved, for the hungered do not always feed upon choice sustenance.

It had harmed me utmost from an aversion to conflict that the liberal speaker, she, had not an instance singly of responsibility, but that at hearing my beloved cousins were defending themselves simply agonized her protestant ear. I think so many, hear a hate and it breeds in them, confined by closed eyes and unmetabolized by cold hearts of stagnant perpetual observation, and slowly simmers their sins, almost for sale to the demons themselves, by their burning tortured souls, an endless hierarchy of useless hegemony and politics, as if my metaphor must be in emphasis of insectal tics feeding on the carapaces of obedient statue pawns. I hope you are strangled by a statue then dragged to the river that flows to hell there sorted by countless slaves of communism's habitation, taken to your reserved allocation for endless demise.

/

Faceless Shadows

Faceless Shadows (covers)

Either an ideological break in proximity, or eventual and possible backgrounds.

Tentatively the next step is to add the characters, hiding behind the lightning, or split in half with one side illuminated and other embodying silhouette, or full light or not. In concept the story is the concepts of the previous stories, to be presented a-front the covers; we see into the climes and atmosphere and the sources and destinations of power, the reflections of a split simultaneous view exposed and shaded by the light while surviving strikes to balance introspection, multiple covers and combining personas in a stormy restructuring of retrospective and ambition, the dealings with losses in examination of perspectives where the aspects of a psyche wholly consume itself, the journey to recognition of what that creates, what it involves, who it invites, and who it serves, and conceptually the same is true.

Additionally, those most humanly fated interpretations to the seven conflicts made difficult by introductory cause it isn't written yet, those characters having yet to reveal themselves from the very shadows of time, the known and unknown darknesses of our existence.

Have some Jungian shadow quotes, he is often overlooked in psychology imho due to his clarity, a general support of individuality, and admission that groupthink is animalistic and parasitic; ...and enjoy my sketch I scanned and modified.

"Filling the conscious mind with ideal conceptions is a characteristic of Western theosophy, but not the confrontation with the shadow and the world of darkness. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious." ~ The Philosophical Tree (1945). In CW 13: Alchemical Studies. P.335

V5

"The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge." ~ Aion (1951). CW 9, Part II: P.14

V4

"Whenever contents of the collective unconscious become activated, they have a disturbing effect on the conscious mind, and contusion ensues. If the activation is due to the collapse of the individual’s hopes and expectations, there is a danger that the collective unconscious may take the place of reality. This state would be pathological. If, on the other hand, the activation is the result of psychological processes in the unconscious of the people, the individual may feel threatened or at any rate disoriented, but the resultant state is not pathological, at least so far as the individual is concerned. Nevertheless, the mental state of the people as a whole might well be compared to a psychosis." ~ The Psychological Foundation for the Belief in Spirits (1920). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P.595

V3

"Unfortunately there can be no doubt that man is, on the whole, less good than he imagines himself or wants to be. Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. If an inferiority is conscious, one always has a chance to correct it. Furthermore, it is constantly in contact with other interests, so that it is continually subjected to modifications. But if it is repressed and isolated from consciousness, it never gets corrected." ~ Psychology and Religion (1938). In CW 11: Psychology and Religion: West and East. P.131

V2

"We know that the wildest and most moving dramas are played not in the theatre but in the hearts of ordinary men and women who pass by without exciting attention, and who betray to the world nothing of the conflicts that rage within them except possibly by a nervous breakdown. What is so difficult for the layman to grasp is the fact that in most cases the patients themselves have no suspicion whatever of the internecine war raging in their unconscious. If we remember that there are many people who understand nothing at all about themselves, we shall be less surprised at the realization that there are also people who are utterly unaware of their actual conflicts." ~ New Paths in Psychology (1912). In CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. P.425

V1:
a detached small notebook cover
with the creases marked.   

"Taking it in its deepest sense, the shadow is the invisible saurian tail that man still drags behind him. Carefully amputated, it becomes the healing serpent of the mysteries. Only monkeys parade with it." ~ The Integration of the Personality. (1939).

Poly-Sea

First, a poem I like to call, The Man Poem. 

"Man Poem" When I love, I feel euphoric, and then I want to you know what, and eventually I get to do you know what if I'm lucky if you know who approves, and then I you know what and sleep. ~ mjbanks

Next, a poem I'm not sure which to call, either 'The Statist Poem,' which is three words, 'Small Print,' which is two words, or 'Gutless,' which is one word. 

'Small Print' By order of the state, more choice has been awarded by force, that is, without being given a choice, but we've chosen to permit choice of choice to some of you, not all of you. In correction to the radical free thinkers, we tell you when to love, in the unlikely event that we allow you to love, we will at such time provide a list of approved activities to utilize that love for the benefit of the community, of which will contain certain state-approved objects of your affections expressly permitted without the things that inspire actual love and/or independence. The list of approved choice exercises is written on paper with sharp edges that you will be forced to pay a fine before cutting your finger in case a weaker person should cut their finger, in addition to the paper tax. Should you wish to file a complaint, the standard paper tax and standard paper-cut tax apply, you will be directed to a bureaucrat who will change the subject, and you will be put on a list that very frustrated people will send in a chain-email letter until it is lost. That list is also subject to paper and paper-cut taxes, and contains names of people that a violent dictatorship will put into indefinite detention if their egos are ever bruised, which is subject to the men-who-think-they're-women tax. By reading this form, you automatically waive your right to retrieve the time lost from reading it, and a compulsory time-management tax will be due, in order to pay for the time management division, which is neither physically possible to operate, nor in operation. Do not attempt to correct any errors in this application for slavery, as politicians have no higher brain functions. ~ Borg  

I was going to wait for winter of 2017, for two or three, but here goes. 

The president is still stupid, literally, and I just want you to let me be clear. I'll do it tomorrow, he probably shouts from his room to the VP. Shouting thru the door. 

*knock, knock*

"What!?"

"You have to keep some of your promises!"

"Gawd, I did already, go away!"

"No, actually keep them!"

"I'll do it tomorrow, let me be clear!"

*turns up horribly not metal band*

So it appears to me as such:

He blamed the wealthy, then he gave the wealthy all the poor people's money. He 'bailed out' the wealthiest, with tax dollars. Taxes are money that poor pay, while wealthy who get higher taxes raise costs on consumers, poor people purchase commodities, which is part of a larger process called consumption, which is part of a larger process called capitalism. If one were to want the wealthy to pay more, then charge them more, a donut for a million dollars, a soda (pop) for two million, etc. That wealthy person could pass the costs onto their respective consumers, or employees, but wages are reflective of supply-and-demand, so if the public cannot afford it, companies fold, politicians usually do another bailout, but that's a repetition of an unsuccessful liberation, or print to excess, which is an even larger more unsuccessful liberation. Also known as a failure. Bureaucrats and the liberal-minded can say it successfully printed money, but the reality of inflation remains, which a donut costs a million dollars, but difficult to pay for an impoverished worker who earns maybe a 100-th (0.001%) of that annually. All while the rich person could've paid the high amount. So he was stupid there, and a hypocrite, or a contradictory traitorous person. 

In a more dangerous situation, he continues using executive-order, whether someone else has, is of no import, do not change the subject, we have to live here. Using executive-order where democracy will do, is beyond the scope of his position and against the law. Those, executive orders, are intended to expedite actions relegated by law to other facets of our government, not his apparently, not to contradict the rule of law. I'd be willing to bet good money that his inability to understand constitutional law is why his academic history has been sealed from public record. To expedite things clearly outside of his jurisdiction is unconstitutional, arrogant, and unsafe. It's my understanding that anything done in haste in the name of any other is dangerous. 

So those are the two, dumb and dangerous, of adding to his legacy persistent, which I thought would make three. That's to say, we can see you, clown. Circumstance and happenstance, it's all a matter of public record. I can't say much about faith, I trust myself, thus I know what faith is. I can't really say I'm against cooperation, but I'm against ambiguity. I'm a Joe Friday "Just the facts, ma'am," sorta dude. Embracing such reckless abandon, in perhaps the name of sensationalism or some relentlessly instinctual animism, as we all can see, seems both foolish and malign. At least it does after six years of it. 

....and so I thought it was stupid, mean, and both, three for three, a trifecta of fallacy. Then today crossed 'the line'....

It's his amnesty push. Now, let's remember, he has a trademark pathological behavior, a socialist sociopath. A party without productivity, he first blames someone else, second reminds everyone to be calm, then in four pieces a) says it isn't that bad, b) says he wants to fix it, c) whines about not being worshiped, and d) then threatens his opposition, and finally thanks people for coming, and leaves without ever providing a solution. 

I opine that he has no solution because he made a contradiction in statement, if a link is bad the chain is weak, if a fact is bad the plan is weak. Losers say why they can't, winners practice/try until they can. I know reading this is boring to an honest person, even if you're not honest and still believe you are, a person can be in denial about many things. We can dream so long as we're free, else we will only dream of freedom, until it appeals to us, thus until we take freedom. It was odd to me that so many enable him, themselves, and others. I think he's a heathen. To avoid confusion, i hereby declare i think oddity surrounds the illogical. By that I mean, some go as far as to treat him like a pharaoh, a dictator, and slowly the walls of morality, reality, commonality, they fade. His sycophants have begun denouncing piety to a book they believe is written by and about a human because they fear indoctrination, in favor of piety to a doctrine written by and about humans. So we've got good old irony with us. 

So I decided this entire article would add my act and the irony bit to make it seem three to me. I'm paraphrasing, I'm not judging the need to escape the socialist dictators and cartel violence, I know I would, but he seemed to adamantly imply urgency and that he needs the country to know 'it means, those who infiltrate illegally, the bureaucracy will feel pity and legalize them, and that isn't an incentive' .............which is why I say it is ironic, because that's verily an incentive (to come here.) For three point seven billion dollars. For that amount of money, southern dictators could be deposed, instead of kissing their asses, a veritable what's what in a 'stop, or I'll say stop again' foreign policy in the case of the 'Mideast' as we call it, desalination and irrigation projects, instead of waiting for trouble and droning suburbs and innocent bystanders, which I guess is his taking sides in the Sunni-Shiite perpetual conflict. We sometimes say 'God helps those who help themselves', so if you want to play god, help those fuckers instead of pretending to be benevolent as a system of operating in debt by your design collapses, inevitably, and you blame everyone else, inevitably, with the immaturity of yours we have all come to know.

He also compared his efforts to the national parks system, which is essentially the process of not building things because some people love camping. Maybe he likes tent cities. 

Anyway, let's close on immigration, if we have no choice other than to let them stay, I have a solution, let's send them to Chicago. Let's send Catholic capitalists, whom sometimes listen to heavy metal, desperate to escape the trappings and violence of socialism and socialist dictators to wonderful Chicagoland. I'm bored of writing a boring article about something that everybody with half a boring brain knows by now.

Check out my amazeballs epic fucking infographic. 

Bienvenido, cochinos y perras, a nuestro gira de exploradores. Encantado. No olvidaís de propinas sus camareras. Hablar con quienes pueden hablar, y hablar inglés con vikingos. Si no podeís luchar, ¿por qué habeís venido?  

If you're one of my professors, don't give me a shitty grade just because you can't think for yourselves and decided to vindicate your overlord, the world needs academic honesty more than ever. I've had three teachers who've been absolute gits about my politics, and classes are expensive, that's another blog post, but honestly very expensive, so don't do that shit. Pardon my English. 

It took 90 minutes to write that; that's a fiction book a week if I didn't have stuff to do; how much does someone cheating the system do in 90 minutes? How much harder is it for people who pay taxes, when people are cheating the system? (Answer Hint: See Above)

#RonSwanson2016

Merlin 3:45 “The Venom Inside”

Merlin 3:45 “The Venom Inside”

Hidden in the mountains where Sino secretly calls home, the Valkyrie wanted dead by other Valkyries, attends a black cauldron full of a liquid the color of iron and wine, heated by burning coals taken from a fire pit, as to heat it slowly. His wings draping in glory, nearby an altar worn with pits of its own from bowls and pestle points over the ages, and nearby the body of a man, quite dead from something fatal, shirt open unwounded still with color. Several emptied horns of mead and drunken sacks of wine as mischievous Sino returns to the Valkyrie, carrying the prismatic opal.

Sino: It has damage.
Luc: Let me see it. Ah, it had returned itself into the shell, poignantly and intact.

The Valkyrie approaches an altar of bottles and potions. Some clear with oil, others of many dark colors to hide contents, he begins pouring one onto the crystalline stone, nothing more than shining it.

Luc: The womb of the termagant is, if not also violent, an immensely acidic place, the alcohol in the liquid will replicate that. (Sets it on table and gets a torch.) To challenge the death of a fresh body with the symbiont, there must also be a strong cold surround it, that it may seek symbiosis quickly within its new host. (He ignites the egg with the torch.)

Sino: Will it still be able to fight Merlin?
Luc: The fire will cool quickly and I will remove the shell. I have only just begun.

As the flame begins to fade, he lifts it with his hand, the searing sound of water boiling in his hand does not burn him, and over the body, he begins to crack gently the top surface, removing pieces revealing a swimming serpent embryo. With a knife, he harshly stabs the cadaver and drags open the incision.

With one hand, he tilts the egg, with the other he slowly takes the liquid from the egg and ladles it into the wound, a second pass and the snake almost bites his hand, they wait and it leaps from the fluid into the body. Luc quickly draws the wound closed and Sino does help him, his wings contract with anxiousness, they wait.

Oil drips from the body, the table, and the discarded shell. Flames flicker, forces gather and an eventual eye begins to open.

Luc: Quickly, we must sow him shut.

Stitch him do they haste confined to certainty surgeons of triage, with bloody hands they drink from bottles, not speaking, waiting for propensity and proclivity.

Luc: It will be simple to see, if the damage to the egg was too much.
Sino: It awakens.
Ophiuchus (v3): You have revived me. It is my need to serve as you please, only after I have the revenge I seek, twice has my enemy slain me, twice shall he owe a grave suffering.
Sino: Who is your target?
Luc: A cambion named Merlin.

Sino looks pleased overwhelmingly insomuch attends to him deliberately.

Sino: Rise and drink, fie the graces, or drink and rise, and if you can move we will cross the plains, for our biddings are the same, together, we will share revenge in his death.
Ophiuchus: When do we kill him?
Luc: (quiet, uncertain) on the morrow, but you must kill him.
Sino: Why is that?
Luc: It must be, but your revenge must also be exact.
Ophiuchus: ‘Exactly’, why?
Sino: We could not save the shell.
Ophiuchus: Of that much, I know. I will have more to drink, sire.

~ mjbanks

Merlin 3:44 “The Serpent Servant”

Merlin 3:44 “The Serpent Servant”

By that which wills yore, there are other fires with deeper fuel and brighter flames, of which one is shining on the face of Sino, who openly despises Merlin, despises power, a renaissance tyrant in the midst of lesser tyrants, speaking to the flames.

Sino: Purity fire bring me to the taker and wrest me from the maker, a servant I seek, or many unspoken words, bring me a servant with scaly armor, crawling from thee a messenger of teeth whose only grasp is to feast.

Scrying, the art of using magic to converse with the universes, by means of crystal glass, the dimensions in whose weaknesses reveal places on a map for a wicked seed, a living fiend in control of venomous wrath, beset closest Sino who appraises a glowing location, a starving point between boundaries and roads. The map and the courier are to be ophidian, serpentine, finding Sino’s treasure will be treacherous in the rough location, a fallen fortress of ice, a damaged tower of lies, melted if not molten, washed if ever stolen, much razed from the confines of a citadel, or buried in the savaged wrath thereupon, but in the aftermath certainly nonetheless.

A snake crawls thru the sweltering jungle, to the murky swamps, to the quiet forest, to restless sea, along the soft coast, to the brilliant plains and inland. The fifteen feet serpent approaches the hammered mountain and onto it, passing thru heavy stones and over tiny pebbles to and thru the ruins of a fortress once called the city of glass, formerly an ice magic temple of frost and ice of spires that from a certain distance resembled a crystal tear from the sky as dawn overcame it. Now it appears no more than an etching of political collapse, leaving where glacial pressure and the pursuant flood of its demise have destroyed its foundation and washed away its ornamentation, a stone garden labyrinth of antiquity. The lengthy serpent passes thru its old quarter, surmises the terrain and finds the egg, pausing and circling it. In an eventual approach, the snake swallows it then leaves on direct path to Sino.

The massive serpent approaches Sino using large swaths from left to right many times to bring its length to a gathered area, rising as if to stand as best a snake can, wavering.

Sino: Do you have the egg?
Ophirus: It isssss… inssssside me, masssssster.
Sino: The silence will come swiftly.

Sino quietly bows and lops off its head, a death of instinct only seconds, the head bites and the body flails. Sino makes a fire in the forest near his dominion, and then begins to slice a single lengthy wound unto the swell, carving for the opal and retrieving it, a bloodied frost colored stone confining a liquid darkness and other impurities. He tosses the stone, the egg, aside and cuts a piece of hide for its commodity, then a steak for supper. The egg is clear by reckoning, and reflecting the forest, containing an embryonic carnage of old forbidden magic.

~ @mjbanks

Merlin 3:43 “Lucre”

Merlin 3:43 “Lucre”

To close a chapter’s events, the bearer pregnant with urgency had struggled to cross the rough terrain to a boat on the bank of a gentle stream high atop turbulent rapid, a witch having had noticed when reaching it that a path from the catacombs leads to it in amenity.

In learning amongst the chaos that the wizard ushers the witch in departure, the vampire lordship ordered a hunter to follow them, with specific instructions that to follow and encourage the belief of intended malice, but is to foremostly regard and protect the two delinquents in secrecy. If so, will have by such a hold to payment in blood money specifically, a phrase flippantly of uncertain meaning.

One of the arbiter witch’s minions, cheating death by her dealings, having made and take quite a many striations, stranded in the settling dusk of the dusk racing even upward from horizons to mountain peaks, there from the mountain’s bright side. In view of the dying dusk below the opaque silhouette of the summit, the henchman unleashed with superhuman strength, a spear to puncture the watercraft or the witch or the wizard.

The utmost pain intended to proximity, a danger by the lashing, a tone innate a weapon then soon in crashing, in the second before it would strike, their vampire follower turned and struck the flying spear aside, the pitcher knowing the aptitude and consequence had rushed to end the vampire, but was in good measure inept at doing so.

The vampire nearly sacrificed the ruffian, by sword to heart the point downward but not thru him, pulling the bloodied sword that he might look into the blackness where a soul would be, falling autumnally as the tracker collected the spear.

A broken javelin was lifted and lofted halfheartedly, to as possibly had could, frightened the telltale wizard into birthing the boat, to wonder the luxury now and then.

With pass of hand, the vampire wiped his sword and cleaned the blood to drink from palm before it sheathed and followed in reluctant jest, without a raft, only his vestments to him in the current, his eyes above the night water.

~ @mjbanks

Merlin 3:42 “Shattering the Spell”

Merlin 3:42 “Shattering the Spell”

For all the days that Merlin has traveled, the witch of the forbidden alchemy had been raising a supernatural army, taking the strength from the strong and folding spirit into other warriors to play the puppet master in a foray of war, her name Ostara attempting anonymity having her minions call her the queen of death or other similar title. None to have ever known why she assembles aberrant forces, fewer ask explanation as those who have are ‘transferred’ to another warrior, save the blind sequester of forces that obey and believe a lack of successful reason.

Soon to realize her ambitions, Ostara travels with her banded villains, each stop increasing her ranks and depleting furtiveness, each soldier costing many more lost and the size of the nomadic forces becomes increasingly less auspicious and more hazardous. Soon eager to discover her purpose, are the moon goddesses, or goddess, depending on your perspective, the maiden, the mother, and the crone. Never intervening only to study, each disguised as terribly short and distasteful drunkards, on the trail of the deathly army.

Ostara, witch of necromancy, exits the lead wagon and toward the first person seen, the walls are barren except for the occasional engraving of a staff with spears at both ends. Each soldier is with weapon and armor, but it does not stop her from putting her hand to the face of her first victim and blasting a bright light, the soldier dies falling swiftly backward. Clamor to battle the soldiers alert each other to her attack, which only serves as the call for the many in her command to aid her, each much larger than any human in the conflict and strong enough to fight vampires.

As she approaches, Merlin watches each far wagon packed with as many men as Ostara can fit, some more magic with wounds that glow beneath cloak than men.

The vampire artisans dance slowly at aristocratic pace and Ana rests. Merlin watches the town across the devilish bridge Ostara’s soldiers entering the buildings slowly one-by-one, stealthily eliminating any foe with powers luminescent, but hidden from the plateau. Tho, of wrought and thoughtlessly awake to awkward stake, the dancing ones of the mountain terrace begin to notice the battle and line themselves along the ledge.

Crimson: What are they seeing?
(A correspondent first relays whispered information.)
Ecivres: Lord Crimson, the hamlet has villains.
Crimson: Have they taken the bridge?
(Again, a correspondent first relays whispered information.)
Ecivres: No, they are taking the town.
Crimson: Never has the bridge been taken, alert me if they do. Send notice to the front gate. Music!

Without sin, Merlin notices the battle and asks the guards in the hallway if they know what will come of these events, without concise response they answer that the corridor has many soldiers and he will know more soon, urged to close the door it is so locking it from in and out.

Merlin: Ever hath it been, hast viewed darkly, session of death below to see, come hither.
Ana: Will they make the vampires lose?
Merlin: Be ready to go, tell me if they take the bridge.
Ana: I am lividly regretful of everything. Always a docent, never the one who gets to sleep, if I had reckless rather, every soldier a child I would birth an army to let me rest.
Merlin: It is fine, look at me; there is the path that leads to the river that is your descent. I fear nothing decent will be atop this mountain.
Ana: Where are you going?
Merlin: I am going to see how inclement the back yard is. Hope is..?
Ana: Not lost.

A near threnody from the blackness witch Ostara gives, evil eyes she stands after combat takes force, stronger she grows with each death, as she is wounded she wails, every foe she touches dies and any close become weak.

Ostara: As worthless as any regent in halls of power, what was theirs to take reprised in clamor and bloodshed of the servants of hell, know, you, will serve death today!

Ostara attacks castle Crimson with undo purpose of reckless abandon, and the advantage of a surprise that her minions do not wound as liberal born would, her gift to their power by the deaths of many make them formidable foes. An army of daggers carves thru the town, still in conquest silent arrows loose upon the first to place a step on the bridge. Not by magic, nor by cavalry, vampiric soldiers afoot loose three arrows a time with double mounted swords, not daggers, across their backs to hack and swift to swipe any portion of limbs, even then merciful wounds are naught. In defiance Ostara’s soldiers have met apt conflict, but with her magic she floats and glows brighter than perhaps even she has ever known, the vampires on the plateau ledge can see and even higher also can Ana.

With the powers of gift reincarnation, Ostara takes the abnormal strength gathered and already given to the wounded, and transfers it to the vanguard soldiers on the bridge, multiplying their tenfold strength to ten times tenfold. The few remaining vampires cannot catch them before she sweeps them from the bridge. The posterity of skilled assassins no more than bodies of vampires who refuse to die any more than that they can, three soldiers of Ostara, now able to heal by burning manna, furnaces of spirit and blood, approach the main gate.

Belladonna and Jimson, poisonous wiccans, make certain not to aid the bolstered warriors or butchered vampires, or any other, and humans allegiant to the undead are poisoned just enough to live agonized and crawling. Ostara knows the height of the empire she strikes and following her personal army to the doors, the sorcerers of vampire magic exit the mountain, as Belladonna had not truly known the size of this conquest. As the many unnatural warriors begin suffering the punishment of by blood magic, an arrow strikes Belladonna.

She uses the poison in her blood to dissolve the arrow and close the wound, the leader Ostara had chosen retreats with her while also nearly towing Jimson with him into the town, a story much more importantly told elsewhere, perhaps ere or afore.

There are not enough blood warlocks to stop them from victory at the bridge and they enter the catacombs, far darker and dangerous than any open combat. It is certain that Belladonna will escape able to herself, her brother, and her rescuer, travel strait for the forest of Warren.

Advantages proven in corridors, the perils of combat, as Ostara is forced to fight alone against six, killing two by hands to their throats, taking their afterlife and consuming powers of darkness. Deflecting arrows by mere elemental magic and igniting the air with force of sorcery, pinning them back as another vampire joins, but her magic is now vampiric until spent and the arriver flies neck into hand enabling her to draw added afterlife, converting it into black fire and clearing the chamber between four corridors. Three attack her, a spear to her body she grabs, her life force so strong that the cut radiates light that agitates their sight without blood, grabbing the spear holder by his throat, draining his life, and forcing another explosion with her second hand between the other two; they are truly dead as she continues. Four approach her and Lord Crimson hears their dying screams, he whispers to his servant who runs into the mountain as he calmly takes a drink.

Some of Ostara’s minions are slowed by many wounds and need healing to finish their victory, as many are outright dead and some have fled only to be hunted and dispatched, some necessitating revival beyond her reach of casting spell, by distance vampire mages have almost nullified their presence at the bridge and dump their bodies into the boundary ravine.

The maiden, the mother, and the crone, walk thru the border village taking reincarnation energy from the fallen and collecting hearts. One vampire so much as notices the maiden so she quickly reverts to her disguise within the blink of an eye to be overlooked among the chaos.

Merlin: Though interesting, be prepared to leave.

As would awake a cold breeze blow the pages of a book, Ostara summons from the fallen their death and magic, the vapors of ethereal blood and thunder drawn to her, magic of necromancers and aged time of vampires.

As are many elements of this tale here, so also is Lilith, servant of Hel. She almost dances thru this chaos, humming, as the witches three notice her they eagerly disappear themselves by running into walls where there are no doors. She admires the death as if it were an art gallery, the skin of the dead dries as she passes, the wounded she ignores, and the vampires attempting to stop her drop like puppets.

Ostara faces a formation, two vampires and two mages behind them, met by her minions who toss her a spear as she steps that she impales the two vampires. The mages unleash green fire that spreads thoroughly to the walls, she must fight thru magic while expending her own, as it clears there are two to absorb before she departs. Merlin finds her sapping the slain.

Merlin: An interesting involvement for such a desperate hole on the world, and I am sure this place is inhospitable. 

Ostara: Spells of the undead you are dying to tell me!

A surge of power by them both, drawing in life, and death, black magic more powerful than she was when had arrived, hoping to imply it to her plan erstwhile, yet a large armament of vampires approach, dividing them, and also not knowing who is foe attack Merlin, he departs rather than dwell.

Lilith meets the vampire queen as most mistake her as one of their own, faster than the eye of anything alive or dead can see teleports instantly from facing a spear to aside its holder, to feed from the vampire, dropping him used.

Lilith: Madam Regent, I charge your office to kill the warlock Sino, and thwart any of these creative homunculi, post haste.
Queen: We serve not extortion and mercenary, we will not fight your battles.

By a mere gesture of Lilith’s hand, the vampire queen drifts above the ground and wretches in agony, contortion beyond ability and speech, pure anguish.

Lilith: How is it so… to prove eternal rest…to damage your place beneath my feet…? These things are not here for me, they are here for you, as I will infinitely be your demise so much more than a promise! I will wield you as I please!

Lilith lets the queen fall and gasp, without word she arises, as her servants attempt helping she urges them to kneel with her.

Queen: Your wish is to me a command.
Lilith: Take me to your armory, I need your nightmare blade.
Queen: The blade, it is our defense, in this very moment we are under siege.

Lilith begins to smile as the queen’s servants begin expiring.

Queen: I will take you to it, my priestess.

The lesser castle at the bridge silent, the basecamp is silent, the halls are bloody, and Ostara is tyrannical. She summons herself new strength from fires and faces, taking life from her remaining soldiers, and then in momentum from the vampires, breathing magic to transfer energy for her spells to distribute death of ages as a weapon. Lilith walks to the armory not answering any questions, pulling a glowing knife from a stone she cuts throat of a servant in the way that only the blade can, without blood the pierce of the blade only spills light and administers deep pain. Throwing the victim, she departs as instantaneous smoke shrouds her.

Ostara approaches the doorway and enters the plateau on the mountain, a gentle rain and a growing nightfall, the black and crooked line of the ravine under the bridge, the lights of the town few and far, and she standing facing Lord Crimson and the throne.

Crimson’s first guard rushes at attacks her and falls at her feet as she breathes in his life, the body collapses. Malachi, walks toward her cautiously a grenade vaporizes before contact, a thrown knife melts after sticking her, only to have the wound glow as her other wounds, like the print of a lioness, her wardrobe damaged to a somewhat immodest state. Begin they in casting magic duel, closer her worries of exhaustion are met by his worries that his threshold for suffering will be met, but it is Malachi that his cast to the wall of the fortress.

Crimson has what he had requested, a pouch, and from it takes a small stone rune, he polishes it with his fingers and decides to charge at her. He dives over witchcraft mortar, dodges magic blasts, and tumbles thru a volcanic cloud of fire, all to put the stone in his palm to her chest. An explosion results to transfer the very ether of the dark night clouds with a force shaking him none, and casting her over the cliff to tatter down the mountain.

He walks to his throne without watching her fall. If so, he would see the three witches moving to obtain the body, reprimand her in their echoed way of sharing sentences, and make certain she is dead.

~ @mjbanks 

Merlin 3:41 “Night Marauders”

Merlin 3:41 “Night Marauders”

Merlin: The lands to the northeast, covered in blood or not, make it to the river and descend the mountain, should trouble arrive.
Ana: Will it come to that?
Merlin: I may have to hold the door shut, but yes, even so there may be other tunnels to the surface.
Ana: Tell me of your new foe.
Merlin: Young and lost or are old and marred by certainty.
Ana: Not your arrogance indeed, you must speak of your newest foe.
Merlin: You mean this Sino fellow; he wants to rule life as all young do.
Ana: Yes, but why yours, and why now?
Merlin: It is a long telling and not a pleasant story for a child.
Ana: We are in no hurry, expecting many things, even the stories that scare us will teach us.
Merlin: Sino was a boy when I met him, a young thief in a village distant from the busy world. His knees where scratched and hands were calloused, as many boys in the worlds, but his by being a thief small enough to crawl the thick and thin. When I met him, he stole from me, and when I caught him, he was stealing for the town’s syndicate of thieves. When debts were due to shady lenders, they would send the boy to steal their dues before they could be quit of debt, eliciting the extent brevity in crime. Thereof I sought to release the boy, if not from the ploy of entrapment to choose who would lose then to an alternative. It would be as simple as staking an interest in a local affair, pitch a tent, take a loan and wait for the boy, when he was to come and steal from me I would sack him, pay the usury costs with gold that would melt in a light rain, and abscond with my spoils. Something of a talent of embellishing truth to the point of overselling my lie, but that plan spent without ill cost, so the boy, an orphan literally in a bag, was mine and I was off. In a week, I fed him and he still stole by habit, so I clothed him to extend the range of reception to his plunder, picking his targets from the likes that he had known, situating him to do what he had done, I would act as the target and he would play the true targets. Time would pass and my near lack of aging would come to question, my unwise decisions left it unanswered, blind to a tension we righted many wrongs and he took a name, his new name, his present name, but too many faults came to our actions. Soon what I see as a grip of deceit in hindsight, it took over who he would choose as targets, the end began to justify the means, and he began poaching tribal estates, or seeing just taxes as his to take, and it was all to stop him.  

Ana: How does a cutpurse take to the dark arts?
Merlin: My fault came to disapprobation and I distracted him with alchemy and sorcery. Eager to learn in what seemed obeisance he followed suit and made with me his apprenticeship of the gentle magics. Healing a flower, wilting a weed, and it was all I could do to stop him from interests of amazement, so much that we eventually took to spectacle in fairs and fests like jesters with smoke and fire. Though for him, it was contingent to forging forward, as we would lay with many, I gave and he would steal, it was the foundations of a deeper desire to hunt. As he came of age, I felt the need to make him stronger in morality, he had seemed to me resistant and avoidant to the idea, ‘stopping tyrants is a thing of armies’ he told me as I had told him many times afore that. Shortly thereafter, he was convinced to be a peacemaker after rescuing a kidnapped maiden. After a night, he would fight. We would dually hunt bounty for criminals and attack bandits of the forests, and he would sidle to them and attack them in their sleep. My trust became my anchor and I docked with my beliefs that calms seas would await a departure with high tides. He soon began capturing girls to lure the gangs in the forest, with no regard for their lives, the greater good of madness to use them as bait, I protested, a fair woman died, and he would not end his tactic. Unable to see the forest for the trees, he meant to cut them all down to stop an absent fire.

Ana: How is he alive?
Merlin: After the first girl died, we disputed our place in the world, and I let him convince me it would happen no more. It became his mission to defy me, to aid another town in need we vetted the mayor’s claims, but he had taken another, when I stopped him we argued, distracted the bandits who were real shot her by arrow. We painted the trees red with their blood to anguish a song of screams, by my wrath a soliloquy fire of annihilation reduced to mere filth, wherein I thought he had died.

It had happened, there, in the forest where the trees were tall to climb, while nature had designed the pines to have few lower branches, Merlin had sat quickly up and walked thru morning commerce and faced unknowing sight painstaking, but certain with wretched instinct had undertook, the straight trail toward the band of thieves. To as much as find Sino as he had the girl, and had called to him, by her arm his grip she being more real than his wager. They argued as they had the week before and Merlin took her by her other arm, aside younger Sino remit her, obnoxious as lamentation, each opposed sentence only tragic moments from both learning intent and auspicial correction, travesty alas beckoned the drifting goons and then the heavier fiends. Merlin grabbed Sino by his better arm, had either of them had hers they could have pulled her from the shot that struck, blood and thunder, they could not reconcile for the fate of forgiveness is at lengths from thieves in any light. Blaming each other, the fight with the bandits secondary to their battle with each other, powers unseen unleashed, Merlin defending only himself, to thwart his attackers he did, but tried to tame Sino one last time, but the student furiously grew strong with magic Merlin had not taught to him. Smoke had filled the floor and the ashes the air, their ire purged silence that the ether had torn and the elements purged the dark of day and light of night.

Sino: Remorse is for the dead.

Into the existence, Merlin stares at the horizon over and beyond the towering mountain landscape of construct and cavalcade forms of structure beneath him, he covers an eye and all to behold in the distance comes closer, he unleashes both eyes to see in focus, and perceives his perception.

Merlin: There is a town in the foothill, a small caravan of traders, perhaps slavers approaching. As from my cartography knowledge, that is the bridge of the soulless. None crossing it who do not serve afterlife, their catacombs become a fortress of solitude…

Just beyond the bridge is the small guarded town that guards the ground of Crimson Mountain. The river is deep into the earth and the town on level ground in a cove of foothills, a small bridge to cross before the shadow of the mountain easily entraps any intruder. In a dark tunnel, beyond the doorway, Crimson speaks to a knight.

Crimson: Neither in nor out, wisely, but keeping close to that door, with a whisper of circumstance. If they enter, if they take to cross the wretched course, I am to know.

A servant brings Crimson a blond maiden, human of course, for partial exsanguination, but the guard that had ushered Ana in her chair up the spiral staircase, one of his eyes faintly aching twitching almost closed, his head tilted and his body askew, lunges for the blond girl and feeds in sign of dry thirst. Before the others pull him from their king’s tithing-girl, Crimson urges them to not.

Crimson: Stop, the guest is closely nascent, he has the human scent like hay fever, and it will pass. He will guard with you being newly sated, but you must drink, as well, the day is only half done, if she dies, take her to the altars of rebirth. Know where our guests are and seek promotion.

Merlin: Just another day in the rat race and now we have the maze to prove it. (She sleeps). It is better this way.
Ana: What do you think is the best way to kill them? (Eyes closed.)
Merlin: They have awoken in a second life, raised by the bloodline of hell, and created to defend invasion.
Ana: And that means?
Merlin: It is better to burn them, to ash, than to run them thru.

A dark hallway with vampires we rejoin.

Crimson: Let us harvest volumes of slow kingdoms to taste with our vanished tongues, to the promenade!

Thru slate and dark of consciousness kindred to the mind and silent halls to doors and time, Crimson shouts into the inner court. An evening on the plateau, the moon weak behind drifting mist, the floor smooth as ice and clear as obsidian, a throne of glimmering darkness etched from the wall places seat over the entire country of whichever era and tribe had claimed it to be named, which the mountain will also tower longer. They bring neither fires nor food, only drinks and dancing to music of bellicose strings and winds, and the entertainment of jesters who combat until bloody and smiling with the knights in combat training for crowds and sport. Crimson with patience of hesitance claims the powerful stone chair. A night of the horizon, a silence of the stars, a motion of the evening in the countenance of a pomp, as two begin to dance a choreographed charade, soon all are pairs and enacting the promenade.

~ @mjbanks  

Merlin 3:40 “Benign Neglect”

Merlin 3:40 “Benign Neglect”

The mountain never moves as travelers approach it, a disordered catalog of truculent storms over the mountains reaching a summit that marks edge to a frozen stone sea of tossing granite waves and foreboding passage for many miles eventually landing in distant valley westward of the elven territory.

While in furtive confines elsewhere, Sino attends the haughty ideation paramountcy, lackadaisical syllogism, and penumbra rankled by intestate ubieties, duties inimical of tormented souls, in fact the same he attends to human prisoners, each attached to slanted crucifixes, strapped for experimentation of potions and spells, notions and nails, on and into the skin and eyes.

Sino: A spectacle, for your demise comes in the mind, as your eyes will see as release will sooth, screams and mine will not, tell me inclusively your pains and you mayhap live into a new dawning age of wisdom.

Save for the allusions of convocations the telling reverts to Merlin. White skies become angry and fill the lands below with clear waters and daylight, slowly piling to the sky in a fog that soon covers visible lands. Walk Merlin and a sordid troop morbid, marching in roving macabre in journey with the many not alive as much as and nor to be dead. A bleak meadow and a narrow path, guards take the wagon to a broader reception as they spend an hour in outright swamp. The utmost in foremost the primary ambivalence to travel with nights as days and days as night, without foisted fabric carapace. Persecuted by true light, sully their secretive reputations by pausing to stare at the light of breaking clouds at the summit’s edge, leaving Merlin and Ana to console and carol their cajole there candid.

Ana: Why does your coven bear the moniker ‘Crimson’ the color?
Lord Crimson: The lands beyond the peak are an unforgiving jagged fuck of a walk for many hectares, from the Vildhjarta Sea to Blackwater Park. The surface is very rough and once given to trolls, so roughly hewn that the only smooth parts are beneath the streams. A myth told to refugees and intruders that this entire mountain is the heart of a slain god once most high.
Ana: And crimson would that be.
Lord Crimson: Perhaps, but the story goes deeper.

Crimson spoke having seen a soldier approach, and speaks with a smile.

Crimson: Put us at stern alarm until the traitors’ capture, they are to enter destruction.
Mencius: Excellent sir Crimson, you have been announced and may enter the same.
Crimson: Very good, and the informants are to be denied entrance.
Mencius: Sir, there have been none for many passing weeks; we feel the traitors may have, exploited them, sir. Only the chattels remain.
Crimson: I have thirst; bring me one, flaxen perchance, and bring her a chair of wheels.

Crimson extends his hand for Merlin and Ana to enter the tunnel of torches.

Lord Crimson: No, the name Crimson comes by a more assured history, there were scribes many ages ago that devoted themselves to mapping the thorny doom we call home, every granite spike and eroded lull, some very many ages ago when it was still called Blackwater Mountain.

The chair of wheels arrives, wicker and tall, spindly and small.

Merlin: To which is become the park town you and I call Savanton.
Ana: Ah.
Lord Crimson: Those cartographers set themselves to carving stone atop the mountain for an outpost, which is where we are taking you.
(Merlin/Ana): Why?
Lord Crimson: Manners and secrets and how we plan to keep them, and we choose to go to depths the air is to thin or to vile for someone expecting. It is little worrisome and more chilled, but you both are of fire and should weather it or not. The mapmakers soon witnessed a vast war; it was, where from the valley several legions tried to scale the wretched side swiftly in secret, only to find slaughter by dragons or apt and antique ravenous beasts. From their post atop the stone, they watched the massacre and in a passage my kind finds dearly, called the color of blood to be crimson many times without different descriptor.
Merlin: How nice to keep us above the caverns.
Lord Crimson: I thought you would enjoy the nostalgia, the last place those humans ever saw before they died.
Ana: How did they die?
Lord Crimson: They tunneled into the mountain and found us of course, had we known they came from above nay below we might have aged them, but would not have done good, they had many years, like these doors.

Old oaken doors of iron lattice and steel posts woven between each hefty plank, made to keep many things out, or in, creaking open to reveal almost the second half of the day still hiding behind the mountain, and the solid splashes of once molten stone for a great distance.

Crimson: When the rains are from the south this room is dry, and on the rare event from the deserts, close the shutters.
Merlin: If they do not at first break, whence was last anyone residing here?
Crimson: The room has only had a single set of owners as I have told you. In this hall, there is a large bell should she start to give or need ye both a thing. I will be… nearby, until the day fully closes, enjoy the view, Merlin, Ana.

The tower to one side gives a clearing fog revealing a mountainside regal court in the face of the mountain only visible by weak moonlight, to the north the rugged ground leading to a radiant desert glowing red with the sunset at its center. For all her woes, alchemy within her blood mends and heals from the power and sight of a sunset desert glow.

~ @mjbanks