The End of the Resting King

Having danced and laughed up the icy mountainside for many years, King Hyprius found himself at the tall and narrow peak of a slender mountain blanketed in snow. All about him the mountain sides fell away into the abyss below from out of which he did ascend and from which other bergs erupted, some taller and more magnificent, casting faint shadows about him.



Balancing on the summit in the heavens, the king looked down onto the great city of Zoë below; she rested, bathed in light and nestled in the bosom of her green fields. Yet the king looked on not in pride nor even in peace, but rather in terror and dismay.

Whilst he had enjoyed his lengthy solitude and respite during his ascension, a hideous fiend,  led on a rattling chain by its master, Argo, had crept silently into the king's courts and castles and had begun to raze the great city down to the clay from which it was moulded. Towers that had pierced the sky were being torn down, crashing into the houses of the confused peoples of the once solemn city, scattering them in every direction. Temples of fine marble were ripped, brick by brick, from their foundations, and their priests slaughtered in the streets, their sacramental goblets and altars dripping with their sanguine sacrifice in defense of their gods - rivers of life poured into the clear fountains painting red clouds of death in the water's play.

Not unlike an infernal whirlwind of pain, the groans of the people of Zoë were carried across the valleys to the ears of their king and he remembered the promise he had made with them before he abandoned them, and he mourned the loss of their fragile lives. A hurricane of torment swirled about the helpless and broken king, his anguish bringing him to his knees and bowing his once joyful head.

The beast, now grown and swollen with the pleasure and gluttony of its relentless scourge, plucked the innocent, fleeing men and women from their homes with twisted, clawed hands. Bathed in the euphoria of their suffering, the beast devoured them, tossing them into its colossal maw - a foul chasm which dripped with gore. Crooked shards lined that great hole; slick with warm ichor. Argo, resting sleepily in the throne of the king, watched, grinning with glee, as the city was brought down, torn asunder on his behalf by the vile creature that he had borne to yet another fertile and unattended land.

Furious at his drowsy complacency and the crude, terrifying titan he had allowed into his midst and permitted to demolishes his creation, the King Hyprius drew his sword - Epitychia, and held an ornate ivory aegis to his breast. Hammering against his shield the king lets out a great cry, a call so magnificent that the beast stopped in the midst of its cruel works and turned to face its challenger, staring up with a single eye, which swivelled and leered out from between two empty sockets.

Argo, glaring at the king from the throne, grimaced and unleashed his brutish pet toward its defiant prey atop the mountain. The fiend bounded, jaws agape, toward the king. Leaping from the mountain top, the king hurtled downwards, back toward the deep abyss, falling to meet and slay the beast. Into the abyss, where the titan raced up to meet him, the king, armed with sword and shield, called the monster's name - Mediocritus!

Life's Arrow Soars into the Styx

The horde formed an all consuming din, the noise rising and soaring like a great vulture, its wings enveloping the mass of bodies in the hum. Mouths flapping and eyes darting, their minds converging and overlapping. A cacophony. A travesty.

     The wisest men abandoned their cries to one another and threw their arms up to the sky, calling out to the winds for a gale to silence and still the many tongues.

     Light shone out from among them, and in their midst there stood an angel of terrifying beauty. Wings about him, he began to speak unto the chattering crowd.

  

     "No longer will there be gods and goddesses whose wisdom falls down to you as rain to the parched earth. Your clay is dry, your soil caked and cracked, powdered, red as blood.

    "They have not abandoned you. No, for you yourselves are they. Your saddest moment was when you turned, submissive, to the waters above for your aid - when your spring was your life, you begged for rain, ignoring the deluge within, remaining trapped in the clouds of your minds, prowling the surface for opportunities to unleash their divine shower.

     "Such grand repose, such great serenity which befalls you in the dark shadows cast by those passing clouds - like gruesome slugs in the midday sun you creep, slowly toward the shade, lest you curl up under that magnificent luminous star.

     "What you flee from is manifest by and from you, drawn out from you and laid before you, even as the sea herself is laid as a blanket before the mountain, in placid pools and torrents - the absurdity!

     "Olympus has thundered and cracked its last bolt of lightning. As a weed-ridden corpse it now stands - a temple made of bones, destined only for dust and ash. You have claimed it as your own. The gods and goddesses left that tomb and now they reside in each of you - yet this great exodus has a beautiful mask which hides the true image beneath, a mask I shall flay from the betraying face.

    "You, children, are doomed - as that shadow cast by the inevitability of your charge begins to tower over you. Thick tendrils of darkness are upon you, wrapping your throat and climbing within you, so that that blackness may rise up from inside the new temple . The world is yours to paint from out of this blackness, and upon you shall the world reflect - you are the painter and the canvas!

     "To you I pour forth my sympathy and congratulations, for I see before you a great freedom to choose which chains you would have bind you - ha! Your creation is your prison. Could you not see it? Your great art is your window pane through which you can see your work, your divinity, enacted but always beyond your reach - never touched. To make the fruit and find it forbidden - what freedom! The strokes of your eye's brush, that is your knowledge, that is your victory.

     "Verily I say unto you, Olympus' end has been, yet Hades lies in wait, bedecked in expectancy, bathed in the mists of the river Styx whose currents slide through you.

     "Warrior! - fire your arrow into that putrescent sea and watch it pierce the lonely cloud, only to fly deep within that ghoulish maelstrom. The waters, thick with the lost anon, pour out from you, from the abyssal well within you. Cavernous it is, yet in you it dwells, around, not beneath, it is always before you.

     "So cower in the clouds if you must, yet know that they are a deception, ascending from those abysmal waters, floating through fear and terror - thus they inherit their black colour, for only in that blackness is light absorbed, consign yourself to the dark, coward!

     "Do you not remember that glow and glory? Run to it and embrace its warmth, as Icarus took to the sky in foolishness and courage so too you must chase that light. Yet do not fly too close, for your wings too may fail, and flames can give unto the air the blackest smoke.

     "Curse the clouds! Drive them out! But keep that ferryman in view. Fear him. Love and create light, but do not let its warmth make you drowsy - even the Fates leave one eye open! I have revealed these things to you so you may know that you are the gods and goddesses imprisoned within your own temples. Statues for whom there are no worshippers. Your houses are fettered with chains and curses, and whose destiny is to be ablaze with fancy until those waters, whose debris are the souls and dreams of fallen heroes and heroes never risen, douse and blot out that glimmering candlelight.

     "You may light your match, I grant you this privilege, but do not forget that it burns bright only shortly, and with its very last light it shall scold your fingers as you clutch it, ceasing to drive back that surrounding blackness which is ever waiting, poised."

     Having said these things, the angel disappeared, the crowd still talking amongst themselves and crying out for a message or sign to guide them and show them the way to silence, not knowing that what lay within them was silence eternal, a destitution slumbering in their midst. The wind would not blow amongst them again.