This is not unusual. Those who attempt to channel or master their guardian Demons possess a strong body and stronger soul lest they be devoured. Such is the wisdom of the Great Emperor who bound all Demons and gifted Theurgy unto mankind. My Lord thrashes and writhes like a wild beast, clutching the burial shroud entrusted unto him. His muscles tense under earthy brown skin, exposing veins pumping both blood and magical energy.
He cries with his face buried in the burial shroud—the very same shroud which the Messiah, the Prophet of God, was buried with before his miracle of Resurrection. Well, that is what they say. Countless great heroes, emperors, kings, knights and saints were said to have been buried with it in hopes of replicating the great miracle of the Messiah's resurrection, and their faith and its history had… consequences on its spiritual identity.
"Please. Forgive me. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Forgive me for everything. I will grant you paradise. I will lead you to the promised land. Just… just hold on for me," he sobs in between whimpers and tears. The rest of his attendants stand back with eyes wide and mouths closed, none brave enough to intercede. None except me.
I approach slowly, footsteps small and light on the carpet of his bedchamber as I try to make no sudden movements. Whispering comes from the shroud. The voices of a thousand long dead heroes and legends who yearned for immortality. It's loud—loud and incoherent—yet there are glimpses of order in the cacophony.
Glory to God. The Almighty one who grants us eternal life and strength.
Allow me to relieve you of your Heresy or your life.
You can live forever. This shroud will guide us towards the pure land of heaven.
Die? I was born to do that. I just don't care if it means sharing a burial shroud with the Messiah himself.
Oh our Aeons, why do you blind us?
Great God Yahweh, lend strength to the weak to let humans survive.
A shudder runs up my spine at the seething fanatical tone of the voices. This shroud serves as a temple to memories. Within it are inscribed thousands of stories and histories across 4,000 years worth of continuity. Stories have power in this world of ours, both in the metaphorical sense, as stories bind people together and entertain people, yet also in the literal sense.
A story with sufficient narrative momentum and belief has the power to shape the truth. Tell a lie enough and it will come true. An imaginary hero can leave behind real relics. Demons are shaped by our desires and trick us into worshiping them despite being our creations. Illusionary kingdoms come into existence, and imaginary gods grant very real blessings.
My father taught me that. "Repeat after me. Existence is not real except as experienced by the self. Existence is not real except as a hypothesis to be tested. Existence is not real except as the contents of a lie. Existence is the same as—"
No! I must not repeat the profane axioms. I must not think of him. I banish the thoughts from my mind.
I reach out my hand and run it through my Lord's mane of dark brown hair dyed with blue. My Lord's hair has not yet turned white like the other hosts of the demon gods—a sign of his pure willpower. I look down at the back of his bare upper body and make note of his absurdly muscled back. It is utterly chiseled. A tempting thought runs through my head to run my hand down his back and name every muscle yet I restrain myself.
The other attendants of his domain constantly gossiped about him. Argetlam. The perfect knight. The ideal male lover blessed with a perfect body. The one who resisted the demon god bound within his flesh and subjugated it. His hair feels… pleasant. Like the fur of a wolf. I can't help but pet his head and embrace the softness of his hair as I prepare to alert him.
"My Lord… are you okay?" I whisper.
He jerks from my touch, moving suddenly until he is sitting on the floor hunched over with a tentative smile on his face.
"Yeah! Yeah! I'm fine. It's just the… the restless memories acting up again. It's this shroud. It bears both the memories and the leftover grudges and curses of those buried with it. It's just that… sometimes it's hard to contain it all." His bright and chipper tone doesn't match his tense body and the tear streaks on his face. "So. You're a real pretty girl, if a little… skeletal. What's your name?"
I eye his body, weighing my response. Argetlam is an absolute goliath of a man towering over six feet and five inches easily compared to my meager five feet and nine inches. He's heavily muscled and bulky whereas I'm gaunt and frail, with arms as large as my waist and pectorals like pillows that could suffocate me, accentuated by his tight waist that's smaller than some of the female attendants I know. His skin is a warm and earthy brown in contrast to my almost dead pale skin, and his brown hair is dyed blue and done up in a mullet that frames his sculpted face and vibrant green eyes. Unlike my pale white hair done up in a ponytail.
I find myself blushing. He is a real man. A real man who could claim anyone he wanted, male or female, with ease. He's likely meant to go with a duchess of some system ruling principality or the daughter of a dynasty of interstellar merchants. Not someone who failed at being a man and couldn't even become a woman properly, like me.
Still, the way he calls me a pretty girl gives me butterflies in my stomach, and a faint blush covers my cheek. I desperately try to cover my face with my simple attendance clothes: a black hoodie loose and baggy enough to disguise the pathetic tissue growth on my chest. "Ro—Roland! Yes! Roland! And I… I'm not a girl…"
He will see through this if he is not stupid.
"Well. You're certainly pretty like one. Don't worry, I've met plenty of feminine guys. All slick and elegant. I got nothing wrong with that."
He's lying. I know that. This bastard. He shouldn't bear the shame of being in love with a weak failure like me. One who failed at being both man and woman. Pathetic waste of flesh. Yet he continues. "Your nerves are all fucked up. I can see it. Something like 20 percent of your nerves are radial circuits. What fucking idiot did that to you?"
The profanity that comes from his mouth takes me aback. He knows that I possess 20 million circuits pumping Aetheric energy over 150,000 kilometers of fiber bound tight under my flesh.
"My-My father was a descendant of Chaldean stargazers—one who studied the narratives and symbolism of the constellations. He had a fascination with Black Holes, the Omega Point and Naked Singularities in particular. I-I'd rather not think of him, but he tried to turn my nerves into artificial radial circuits. They don't actually produce Shakti, they just store it for later. I only have my natural circuits to perform Theurgy with."
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His eyebrows curl and his face shifts into a dead serious expression as his voice drops to a murmur. "He turned your nerves into radial circuits? Why? You could have been killed. How much did it hurt? And did that bastard pay?"
Truthfully, I don't remember how much it hurt. My circuits dull my senses, I still feel things, but it is significantly less intense than other humans do. I often forget when I cut or burn or shock myself because it barely feels like anything.
"I don't know what happened to him. Everything I have heard says that he disappeared into the Galactic Center and was never found. I presume he died. Please stop asking me things regarding him. I… I'd rather not talk about him."
Argetlam smiles and gets up, and it is only then do I truly understand how tall he was. I was at eye-level with him when he was sitting, and now my head is at his chest. He is so large. His frame is like a two-door fridge, his shoulders are so broad, his chest so large, while his waist is so small. He smiles and reaches his hands down to pet my head like I'm a dog. "Well. Thanks for snapping me out of that. Sorry about what happened to you. If you want to talk about your issues, then come to me anytime. Just make sure to get ready because we are going Rakshasa hunting."
A furious blush fills my face. The way he smiles at me, the way he runs his hand through my hair. It feels…. It feels nice. Yes, nice. "Thank you, My Lord."
Radial energy, Shakti, pumps through my circuits.
I lay on the grass in one of the great gardens of the Command Citadel of my Lord, letting my natural circuits produce radial energy to be stored by my artificial ones. I need to grow strong if I am to be helpful in the coming battle against the Rakshasa.
The garden around me is nurtured by nanomachine gardeners and artificial nature spirit constructs. Great trees upon which are red and orange flora decorate a landscape of perfectly smooth and geometrical rock carvings and flowing rivers of red liquid like blood or wine. It could be viewed as a human replication of the Eden where the first human was sculpted from dirt, or the Pure Land of the Buddhas, an ideal realm without suffering where a soul may relax for eternity, or meditate peacefully to attain enlightenment. A reprieve from the grinding war against Rakshasa, demons, vampires, and other interlopers across stars and systems.
Yet that is not what fascinates me.
The sky above is full of asterisms, fixed stars brimming with information. Souls naturally generate a sort of spiritual heat or emission through their cognition. One may call this information or complexity, a secondary system of physics or set of rules overriding the mundane deterministic one where faith, symbols and narrative weight possess power over the usual laws of physics.
The constellations are where I draw power from. Or rather, the information, the myths and concepts attributed to and contained within them are shaped by my will into spiritual constructs. I look through the constellations, the concepts contained in them, and decide to shape my weapon. I need to be strong for my Lord. I have his attention and it will make him sad if I perish.
"Hey, Roland. You never told me that your father was one of those Omega Point weirdos or that he went to the galactic core. What was he like? Why did he turn your nerves into circuits? Also, can I take a look at your Radial circuits?" I hear a voice speak, a voice that sends chills up my spine. My fellow attendant Oliphaele Wodime and her "crew" of Nils Heydir-Dragliaz, Trisethmus Gloria, and Adelle Widyamaya.
Oliphaele's long golden hair glitters like the colour of the sun. Her eyes are an icy blue, her skin so smooth and pale that she seems almost like a porcelain doll, yet her gaze reminds me of a elegant lioness. She is a woman, a true woman. Refined and proper, clad in a white cardigan and blue skirt with an aura of elegance and meekness.
Everything I could never be.
I should leave. I need to prepare my weapon before the war against the Rakshasa. I already have picked what constellations to use next. Taurus, Leo, Scorpio and Capricorn. Those will be my next additions. Yet I can't leave. I don't know why. My mouth grows dry and a lump forms in my throat.
"I-I'd rather not talk about it. I truthfully don't remember much about him. What I think he was trying to do was store… something inside my nerves. Something massive. I don't know what it is. I don't know if he was even trying to contain something. But sometimes… I…. I…. Just leave me alone. Please."
A man appears in my mind, young, slender and androgynous with shimmering golden hair, and he tells me, Oh blazing light of creation and truth beneath all things. I give you my flesh. I give you my progeny. Great Lord. Please give me your spark. Give me your divine Pneuma and I will enshrine it at Omega.
Something rumbles inside my radial circuits, makes me choke and makes tears pile up at the edge of my eyes. A crushing heaviness piles up in my head, in my chest. My heart palpitates and thuds heavily like it is going to give out. Napalm—no, plasma runs through my nerves and radial circuits as my body is set alight. I am dying. This is what death feels like. I know it.
"Hey, Roland. You froze again. You okay?"
How pathetic would it be of me to die like this? Not even in battle against the Rakshasa or some other enemy of the Gods, just here on the grassy field of a Command Citadel. How pathetic would that be?
"Well. Thanks for snapping me out of that. Sorry about what happened to you. If you want to talk about your issues then come to me anytime. Just make sure to get ready. Because we are going Rakshasa hunting soon."
I can't die quite yet. My Lord told me I could come to him if I had any issues. He smiled at me. I believe it would displeasure him if I were to die. So I must not die.
Ophiuchus. The Serpent-Bearer. In Roman mythology, it is said to represent Asclepius the "founder of medicine", who was struck down by Jupiter for the resurrection of the dead and became a god himself as the constellation.
I'm not going to die today. I shape the information, the bundle of concepts containing "healing," "defiance of death," and "resurrection" and infuse it with my Shakti, the energy of the soul, the power of the great goddess Mahadevi representing the eternal balance between creation and destruction that flows from the soul into the world and flows from the world to fill the soul.
"Is he dying? Get a damn alchemist here! Or a spiritual surgeon. I don't care!"
Three. Two. One.
I infuse Ophiuchus into my fist and pound my chest with the concepts of "healing" and "defiance of death."
"Wait. Don't. I'm gonna be okay. You don't need to." I try to breathe.
Adelle presses her hands against my shoulder, running her hands down my back as I gag and my drool drips down onto the grass of the garden. I have to get up. I try to close my mouth, my eyes held open as I attempt to take deep breaths.
"Are you okay? You looked like, well, like you were dying," Nils asked.
"Yeah, yeah I am. Just…. Just give me a moment." I cough deeply before that heaviness I feel goes away. I can breathe clearly now. I no longer feel like I am dying. This is good.
I hastily get on my feet and decide it would be less disgraceful for me to run away than for me to try to explain this incident to them. I turn around and run directly through the group, bumping into a few of their bodies. Then I dash as fast as my legs can take me away from them and retreat to my chambers.
It is better if I work on my weapon for the next battle.
My room isn't decorated too nicely. There is only a single desk filled with books on Theurgy and history and a wall-screen displaying a winter wonderland of a forest with the A/C set cold enough to match the visual. It feels nice when I bury myself in blankets and feel the contrast between the cold air and my inner warmth.
Only we Attendants of our Lord get this type of privilege. The Astral knights all sleep communally in crowded bunks in-between training for each battle.
I focus on my creation. Taurus is already set up. The Divine Bull. Although originally the Bull of Heaven owned by the goddess Inanna, the meaning of the sign has changed since then along with its name. It refers to the Divine Beast form of Jupiter, who took the guise of a bull to lure in Europa. This constellation contains the concepts of "heaven," lightning," "order," and "justice," but Due to the specific episode it encompasses, "fascination" is also included as a bonus.
Time to make the next additions.
Capricorn. Enki, also called Ea and Aos, the primordial Mesopotamian deity acting as the patron of humanity. Considered the lord and shaper of the earth and sea, he is the supreme god of the first religion in history. He handed down the various divine authorities of civilization. These stars contain the concepts of "life," "magic," "intellect," "creation," and "knowledge."
Leo. The Nemean Lion, a monster immune to the creations of mankind as a living anti-human singularity. It is associated with the concepts of "victory," "conquest over nature," and "valour," but also negates the concept of "humanity."
Scorpio. Corresponding to the constellation of Scorpius, representing the divine scorpion listed among Orion's various attested causes of death which broke the heart of the goddess Artemis. Contains the concepts of "pride," "venom," "death," and "severance."
My ideal weapon. I shape Leo into a sword, and I coat it with Scorpio. The greatest defense is offense. Taurus and Capricorn will overcharge the poison of Scorpio and anti-nature effects of Leo into an ideal weapon against Rakshasa. A thought rings through my ear. It would not be ideal to have a glass cannon of a spirit that hits hard yet falls apart the second it hits stiff resistance.
A risk I will have to take then. Increased defense will result in decreased offense due to me having to sacrifice Shakti to empower its armour. I impart the concept contained within Capricorn, Taurus, Scorpio and Leo and shape them into my ideal hero. A knight clad head to toe in crusader armor, smooth plating studded with the constellations and stars. He looks a bit like Argetlam when he is clad in armor. It is not unwelcome.
KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK.
I dispel my knight to save energy and head off to the sliding door of my room. I open it, and Adelle greets me with seven large books in her hands. "Roland? Lord Argetlam wished to give you this as a gift for helping him."
I take the seven heavy books into my hands while she tries to say something. "Also…you want to talk about how you nearly…."
"Sorry, but I'd rather not." Then I close the door on her. I will have to apologize to her next cycle for the impoliteness. But for now I sit down onto the bed and go through the seven papers. They are all hardcovers written by someone named "Neutral M. Flashgraphm" a pseudonym if I have ever seen one. I scan through their titles.
- Holes for the Last Worm: An argument for the conception of the gravitational singularity as a pathway to Brahman/The Omega
- Returning to the Fount: An argument for the role of the black hole as evidence of the circularity of the cosmos
- Apples of Fate: A neo-Newtonian perspective on the nuanced interactions between Shakti and gravity
- Where is God's brain? An analysis of Isaac Newton's conception of "absolute space" in its occultic context
- Quantum fluctuations of virtual particles, Ananda Tandava, and why Shiva lies in the void
- Everything is really math when you think about it: A post-occult look into the mathematical nature of the universe and the omniscience of the Buddhas
- The Dynamics of Ontological Fields & Assorted Notes on Mathematical Structures
I should sleep. I really should. But… these titles are tempting.
I could spare a few more hours to read before I rest.