Chapter 17: Lotusland

Written from the Custodian’s Perspective

“Dearest Mair, once-kin of Yhov, who found freedom as does the stream through thickets of fallen leaves and shattered twigs. You’ve come as Spring has, through the storm of death, to arrive in colour o’ man-in-black.

“Our home in Heaven floats between the waves and dashes with alacrity to avoid chomping maws of razor teeth. With your help we have landed an anchor below the reef, finding comfort in an aurora of coral masking the deep, our haven-home.

“Might we, still yet with you, know an eternal peace? Is the tranquil way the Way? Perhaps this is a stepping stone yet unto greater things? A sure start nonetheless in landing upon freedom without so much as drawing a speck of blood.

“We have mirrored Her Way, that Way, and in doing so have wiped clean our mirrors–which now reflect the moon–and starved our hearts. O’ hearts, thumping centres, self-serving generals who serve in equality with their brother organs.

“Dearest Mair, now-kin of Her, who with us floats in freedom down a steady rivulet painted with Autumn leaves and rolling logs. We sit as Autumn has, through the sun-lit years of life, to arrive in lived-out-years o’ man-in-black.”

I spoke in greeting to Mair, welcoming him home. The four stood beside me, together making six. We silly six, this union of newfound freedom. An arcadia of our own design, welcoming to the Dream passersby, now home to ten thousand things.

“I shan’t ever again lay with evil, good friend of mine, Custodian of our home.” Mair said to me, embracing me and our fellow four as brothers. “This is the Way, the hidden way, deliberately cast off into the abyss by Yhov’s eager throw. Yet, as with all things good it shined too brightly to be masked by passing greats and daemons alike. We found it, as was our right, the right of all who herein reside, and made it true again, situated on our shared mortal coil.”

“And so we gather for a rite of passage.” I joked, eliciting hearty laughter from my compatriots into which I joined for some time before we then were seated and served wine by my great friend Whispering-Giant.

“Through passing hands the crown is guided and seated rightly atop the peak, the jewel of the body, the roof of our saviour and farseeing friend. O’ Mair, mighty Mair, we declare you Curator of the Deep, champion of hallowed grounds, you will carry the torch that keeps us on freedom’s course.”

We cheered thrice and partook of good wine, long into the night, laughing and singing and banging on many drums, joined by the music of the forest to create a symphony for the ages. Come morning our extempore ritual had arrived at fruition and Mair stood tall and over us all with an air of due pride.

“A gift, a gift for our new King.” I heralded, drawing Mair’s attention to an approaching ethereal spirit glowing green and white. It carried in its incorporeal grasp a small brown box of bark and stone. The spirit approached and bowed deep before ascending the stairwell to kneel at Mair’s feet.

What the spirit presented Mair collected, opening the box in one smooth singular movement. What lie therein: a lotus of the purest orange and pink. Mair affixed the flower to his lapel, making him a true man-of-colour. He wore it with ease and wore it with sincerity, thanking the spirit before it returned to Nature’s heart.

“Shall our King sit?” I asked him.

“No.” He replied and looked upon me knowingly. “He shall walk and make a place for himself beside gushing falls.” And so he walked, off into the distance, to collapse into a sage’s meditation. A position upon stone overlooking stone and waters deep, a place at which to fall into a sleepless dream. The spirit therein is cast, thrown as a die, tumbling into the world-tree in search of a point of arrival.

In finding one, may it be at peace. May it survey the land and know where evils lie. May it watch them with compassion and wish for their self-awareness. May it hug the meek and cradle the wounded, and wish for evil-doers arising virtue. May it cause by its mere stillness a clearing of the board; by its mere stillness the slate made new.

In Mair’s success we believe–we believe in that man-of-colour, lest we fall prey again to Her clutches and cry ‘till death in Her deep. Lady Yhov’s dungeons know no mercy, and make right by their duty through ceaseless torment. Long live our King, who walks the Way.

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Written from Jack’s Perspective

“Vidal! Stay with me!” I barked, eyeing Vidal stumbling left and right, nearly tripping over a bed of flowers interwoven with ivy and sprouts. The force of my command rumbled through the air, literally rippling along the space between he and I ‘till it slapped the side of his head and brought his gaze to me. Then, he finally started to move in my direction. Contented, I set my eyes on the reality-bender.

Noam charged at the man-in-black immediately after drawing his sword, meeting him in an exchange of surprising speed. Our foe rocketed around this wonderland as if he was its master, flying without wings or a visible propellant. He’d drawn a blade of his own, lavish in design with a bright blue crossguard and leather-wrapped handle. The pommel sparked the sun’s light and disturbed my vision with each pass overhead they made–it was some crystal that warped the light and turned yellow into technicolour.

That disruption accompanied their speed, moving so fast that mirror images of themselves in spectral form trailed behind and faded slowly into obscurity, and prevented me from joining the engagement. Instead, I took Vidal by the arm and rushed over to a nearby mushroom to stand beneath its cap. The fungus stood tall at what had to be ten or twelve metres, with a spotted yellow and blue trunk.

The surrounding woodlands were equally as marvellous, thick and luscious verdure interwoven with a multitude of flowers of every make and model, and every colour and texture, that in their totality created a vaguely discernable fractal pattern descending into the distant trees. It was entrapping, inwardly drawing, as if the spiral itself had reached out and pulled my mind into its centre, down its swirling slides.

Thankfully, the duality of chaos behind us was enough to recapture my attention. An explosion shook the earth and split a grand crack up the centre of the mushroom’s spine, bringing it down in a mighty thump and snap. The man-in-black had shot Noam down in passing. As I turned I spied his limp body falling to the ground in a plume of smoke wafting off of his charred clothes and flesh.

I sensed he still remained in the fight and compounded that trust upon witnessing him catch himself, and flip, landing on his wobbly feet with his blade still in hand. Leaving Vidal to sit beside the collapsed cover, I hurried forward and stood near to Noam, looking upon our enemy who floated a good ten metres above us.

“Have you wounded him?” I asked whilst tightening the grip on my own weapon’s hilt, bringing it up defensively to shield my chest and neck. I kept my attention fixed on our foe’s sword, the blade of which had begun to glow a faint watery blue that almost melded with the colour of the sky, and as it moved through the air it sung faintly like a harp.

“A solid two blows to his chest, note the coat.” Noam replied, gesturing loosely at the man-in-black to carry my eyes to his uniform which had been sliced up thoroughly, and stained red in two spots on the chest. Yet, unlike Noam that bastard was still and tall, as if unphased or suppressing his pain.

“Where are we?” I then asked him, once contended with our circumstances and experiencing a sensation of hope. He’s able to be wounded, and although Noam’s suffered a few sizable blows he’s still standing, and probably still recovering from his time in the tomb.

However, before Noam could give me an answer the man-in-black spoke up and uttered his reply as he began to descend down to eye level, landing ultimately in the grasses just ahead of us, butted up against the treeline.

“You are in a realm beneath realms. A pocket of hope and freedom nestled safely between large leaves, hidden from prying eyes and destructive claws. An eager home for the willing who walk our Way, without fear of Her intrusion.” He said, and for the first time I noted a real difference in my disposition.

“Silence!” Noam commanded in a growling and turbulent way. “Do not dare to sully Her name with this discord and heathenry! Violence is the only answer–Jacobi! Fight with me!”

For the first time I felt a genuine sensation of freedom, as if a weight unknown and settled had been lifted from my skull. My psyche stood and roamed about itself without fear of intrusion or watching, and soon thereafter I knew what it was: I was free from Yhov’s gaze and cut off from Her assistance.

The Mother didn’t reside in this place… this place beneath places. We were genuinely free, free from both our brethren Ascended and the Human chattel. As I came to my conclusions Noam neglected to wait and charged once more at the man-in-black. Letting go for now this curio I too pushed forward and leapt into the air, finding myself as well able to fly, so swinging and stabbing mercilessly beside Noam.

Our furthered engagement lasted for two whole minutes before our foe commanded with frightening ease the flora and fungi of this world. Our combined attacks forced him to the ground, and he landed near to that same spot beside the treeline. Once there, he raised his hand and flicked two fingers in our direction. His action sent life springing into the adjacent trees that subsequently locomoted and lashed out, slapping us with branches of incredible length and fortitude. The bark of the smallest of twigs withstood our blows, and we found ourselves forced back and back till our own backs met new trees and were shoved forward and surrounded.

Branches of variable size slithered about one another to encase us in an amorphous cage, occasionally discharging sticks to strike at us and our blades, lacerating flesh and threatening bone. Noam fell to his knees first and was immediately seized by the trees, caught in place and bound to the earth. He dropped his sword and it faded from existence.

Unlike brother Noam, however, when I found myself upon my knees I was neither grabbed nor grappled, but was left alone. The trees cleared a path in the surrounding blockade for the man-in-black who entered with his hands in his pockets. His blade hovered in the air above his right shoulder and aimed itself at what I took to be approximately the area of my head.

“Jack of Noble Veha, your city is without a crown. I am Mair, Curator of the Deep, I know what you feel and I know what you seek.” Mair inhaled deeply amidst his speech and his approach. “She isn’t here. How do you feel? What do you see?”

My eyes darted between Noam and Mair, noting my companion’s blinded and blistered visage roaring against bark growing ever tighter, and settled upon the man-in-black, Curator of the Deep, whom I regarded with a solemn expression and downtrodden tone. “I feel relieved of chains I had grown so used to as to forget I had been bearing them.”

“For once in your Ascended life, dearest Upyr, you have found yourself situated such that you stand away from Her prying eyes. They cannot see you here, so you are but a blip in Her memory–walking without fear of Agent-born repercussions.” Mair said. “This is a promise that can be kept in the land between lands, wherein we silly six sit and partake of Mother Nature’s libations. She is the true Mother, the Mother of all the myriad things, whose reign was cut short and sent into hiding by the will of the Worm-Queen.”

“Bastard! Lying bastard!” Noam released a violent, muffled, and pained scream that carried itself hurriedly against his bindings. I caught first in my periphery and then in my direct gaze a tumultuous thrashing that sent waves through the air alike in appearance to my earlier calling at Vidal. Noam’s muscles strained and the veins thereabout bulged against his flesh, pushing and pulling with such force that the tree-limbs began to crack and crumble.

Mair, however, seemed to be oblivious to Noam’s pending escape as he continued to approach me methodically. His composure had lost its previous stoicism to find an easy kind of welcoming grin, similar in composition to what one might imagine a friend to adopt spontaneously upon seeing you after some weeks or months of time apart. “Jack.” He muttered now softly, more quietly than before. “I sense a deep-rooted seed of disorder, that which the Mother had planted within the valley of your mind. Allow me to dislodge it, and you may find that comfort-beyond-the-glass-wall that I so simply sense you to desire.”

The acorn of a mighty watching-tree. My own great sequoia psychically shouldered, bearing the weight of the Mother’s eyes and the thousand looky-loos, those sorrowful Agents of the damned. Is he trying to corrupt me? To make me an Astray? She nurtured me, if overbearing by nature, She kept me safe.

“How could you ask me to do such a thing? You tore a mighty rip through space, Mair, your nature is illusory.” I asked and accused.

“My illusions are based in space, Jack, and shield our union from Her decimating gaze. Free yourself and peer about this consecrated ground.” He replied, and raised out his arms to bring me to gander upon the treetops and far-off clouds and birds. Two suns illuminated the sky.

I closed my eyes and took an internal hold of the spread of my quintessence, bringing it inward to coalesce in the centre of my chest. Once unified, it ascended up through my throat and out the top of my head, projecting into the distance where I observed the many facets of Mair’s lotusland. A place of indescribable diversity, the creation of a God. Home to ten thousand creatures, a sanctuary of weightless breath; the Way of nature.

Upon returning my soul to its shell, I reopened my eyes and aimed to speak, hoping to offer Mair my preliminary acceptance. However, before I could manage to utter those treacherous words I was sent flying to the right, sliding through the dirt, at the force of Noam’s freedom.

He literally exploded out of the woody bindings and reformed his sword. From a power-stance Noam launched himself at Mair, catching the man-in-black midair to slam his body down into the ground. A crater formed around him, and Noam subsequently impaled Mair’s skull with the tip of the blade before carrying it up and out, splitting his head in twain.

Thunder rolled at Mair’s coming to quietus. The skies darkened, first at their edges, coming inward to seal the blue in sable robes. Those dual bulbs vanished and the birds blended into the deep. Far off the cries of the broken carried over the tree-line and spoke of coming recompense.

“We need to leave, now.” Noam observed, turning in the direction of Vidal to whom he called. “We’re leaving! Now!”