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.
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