The Death Of Prysius

Genesi, alive and real on the great stone of Prymia was suddenly full of the realization of her solitude. And Genesi grew lonely, still full of the visions of Maria, still full of Maria’s dreams. And from those dreams, Genesi imagined a Companion. And so, from the center of the stone of Prymia, Genesi carved and crafted the Colossus, the colossal dream of Maria, and Genesi named the Colossus Prysius, which would mean many things, such as “Of Prymia,” “The First Man,” and “The Mountain.” And Prysius was of the some white stone of Prymia, the same white stone of the bones of Genesi. Prysius stood tall as a mountain. Genesi was hardly a speck to the Colossus; she was but as tall as one of the carved stone eyelashes of Prysius. And as she crafted and carved the Colossus, Genesi scaled its mountainous bulk, and when at last her carving and crafting was complete, Genesi stood atop the scalp of the great Colossus. And Prysius stood at the center of Prymia, motionless and statuesque, and Genesi stood at the summit of Prysius and she surveyed the Void upon which Prymia had been hung by the Dreamer Maria. And still Genesi felt solitary and alone, for Prysius had the appearance of a man, but did not have the breath of life or the spark of will. And Genesi called upon her knowledge, upon the visions and the dreams of her mother-self, Maria, and Genesi kissed the stone scalp of Prysius and with that kiss imbued the Colossus with the breath of life and the spark of will. And with that kiss, great Prysius was alive and Genesi had created the First Companion.

But Genesi’s kiss was insufficient, Genesi did not have the full knowledge of life and of will, and so Prysius was incomplete. And with Prysius’ awakening came a great suffering, a horrible suffering, because the soul of Prysius, the life of the great Colossus, was incomplete. And there was, from the Colossus, a great wail of anguish, an anguish so great that it tore into the soul of Genesi and filled her with remorse and with pity. And she lamented her creation and she tried in vain to comfort Prysius. But Prysius could not be comforted.

And so in the same swiftness by which the kiss of Genesi had brought life into Prysius, the anguish of living laid the Colossus down, and the life and the will of the Colossus escaped and Prysius died. And the death of Prysius was agonizing. With Genesi still atop the scalp of the Colossus, Prysius slumped to his knees and died in pain. And the death rattle of Prysius was so immense that it created seven great fissures in the stone of Prymia. And with the death of Prysius, with the collapse of the Colossus, the body of the Colossus split and crumbled and from its giant veins unleashed a torrent of blue-white blood across Prymia, and the blood spilled and flowed into the seven great fissures, and so the Rivers of Prysius were formed. And the Rivers radiated from the crumbled form of Prysius, from the center of Prymia, and what had been the Colossus was now the ruins of a man, a great mountain at the center of Prymia.

And Genesi felt a great sadness at the death of Prysius, at the death of her creation, and she stood atop the mountain of the remains of the Colossus and she thought of the mountain as The Spine of Prysius and the Memory of Prysius and the Corpse of Prysius. And the mountain was called Corpuspire. And the mountain at the center of Prymia would become the lair of the Executrix, the lair of Genesi. And for a great while, Genesi reflected upon the creation and the death of Prysius, and she wept over the death of her First Companion.

The Birth Of Genesi

Before there was anything, there was another something, a Great Elsewhere that cannot be perceived, that cannot be properly understood. And in that Great Elsewhere, there were beings, being that likewise cannot be perceived, that likewise cannot be properly understood. These beings have names like all things have names, but only the name of one of these beings is known, and the name of that being comes down to us as Maria. And Maria, the unknowable being of the Great Elsewhere, dreamt like all things dreamt.

There was, in the unknowable mind of Maria, a black Void, an empty space, a canvas upon which the being could paint her dreams, and in the unknowable sleep of Maria, a great white stone disc appeared, hung from the black Void, solid and real. And in her dream, Maria named the stone disc ‘Prymia,’ which, in her unknowable mind, would mean many things, such as “The First Place,” or “The Beginning,” or “The Stage.” And Prymia, then, existed, somehow tied to the mind of Maria and somehow separate and real in the Void in her mind that existed, somehow, outside of the Great Elsewhere.

And before Maria awoke in the Great Elsewhere, she dreamt a dream of herself, first as a collection of stone white bones cut from Prymia, a collection of bones that Maria animated with her thought, brought together by the will of Maria, each of the bones carved from the white stone and fitted together and strung with nerve and muscle and then sheathed in a snow white flesh that matched the white stone of Prymia. And the silent form of the dream of Maria laid upon the carved rock of Prymia, an idol, a doll, until Maria dreamt a pair of emerald eyes and the breath of life and the spark of will into the white form. And suddenly beset with emerald eyes and the breath of life and the spark of will, the dream of Maria sat upright on the stone surface of Prymia, and now independent from the Dreamer, from Maria, she stood, imbued with the thought and the impulse of the Dreamer, but wholly separate from her.

And on the white stone, the dream of Maria, the independent dream of Maria renamed herself Genesi, which, in the unknowable mind of Maria, would mean many things, such as “The First One,” “The Executrix,” or “The Queen.” And Genesi was full of the impulse of the Dreamer, tasked in the Dream to build the world as imagined by Maria, as imagined by the Dreamer sleeping a deep sleep in the Great Elsewhere. And Genesi, the white dream of Maria, was given all the power of the Dreamer, and the plans of the Dreamer, of the Architect Maria, bloomed in the new mind of Genesi.

Answer

I drew the pitch from the sky, sucked it out of the night sky, and I let the black pitch of the night run, thick and heavy, down the walls of my throat and I drained the black into deep blue. And from a great yawn I released, the sun spooled from my mouth, a flaming shriek that boiled into the heavens, blistering the blue of the sky, smoldering like diamonds, and dripping from the sky. Liquid white metal fell to the sun baked ground, and is it fell, it formed crystalline bones, bones that moved with an eerie harmony. The bones heard the voice from the sky. Each of them dreaming a dream inside of its marrow. And they fell, loathsome and cruel and base, a bloodied drift that became a riot of doom and red sky bleeding; the child of the sky burning aside, raging aside, the star drift of a million days that fell into the mourning chasm of the end of the universe. The eyes that spilled forth from it dried into a million bloodied flakes that rained through the heavens like crimson snow. Harmonics sound like the royal dream, the royal dream of black... black... black... what I long for is the profundity that is granted to the strangest amongst us, a sort of knowledge that I cannot begin to fathom in the current state of lucidity. In the twilight between dream and wakefulness I can sometimes feel it, sometimes it crosses over from the chasms I want to map and describe. There should be some museum to it, some museum in the corners of my brain, all the knowledge of the earth and the second earth is that there is SOME purpose to it. Some belief that transcends the cold logic of fact and breeds into a world of chocolate doves and rain that burns through the metals and woods and concrete and shale of a world ruled by numbers and cold physics. And deep in those secret moments, etched into the sidelines of the universe, the secret names of the black, the secret names of the void, I will find the scraps and clues that are stitched into something approaching genius, something approaching profundity. I CRAVE ANSWERS. Like a sickness or a hunger laced with the yellow jaundice of worry and anxiety, I let it crawl into me, a crawling thing, a crawling thing of yellow fingers and thick yellow nails. There is an answer. There is an answer. There is an answer. Amongst the differences and variations in things like tone and grass and lightning, I can see them, the stitchwork holding the various bits and scraps of the universe together; and the backwards eyes and ears of nothing scream those answers into my ears. I will find them. There is an answer. There is an answer. There is an answer.

Train Noise

Holding my head in the mists of twilight I feel the walls of masonry rise up around me, cold, gray and wet with the fog. And there are lights overhead, the fearsome lights of a million dead worlds all converging like ancient space faring vessels, all converging overhead and shining down beams of blue-white luminescence that run across my face like sun rays. I bleed from my ankles and wrists. There are words built into the blood, drunken words that spill out in drunken rambles, and I curse them, I curse the rambling, I curse the words tumbling from my wounds. There is the sound of freight trains in the back ground, a horrid whistle that signals the great motion of the bulky machine. It moves closer and the ground under me shakes. The walls rise up around me, sheltering me from the sound, from the movement of the train. The world gives way under me, and I drop, as if into a great shaft in the earth. And in that chasm all the faceless members of the human race stumble in the darkness, their chalk white skin crackling with blue lines, with throbbing blue lines of fear and worry, and I am afraid of them. High above, the spacecraft still hover and the train still runs, an infinite extension of rolling steel off into the abyss of an endless horizon. I can still feel its motion down in this pit, down in this pit of faceless men, and I hold my breath and I see them change in the pulsing lights coming down from above. They melt, their white skin sloughs off from their frames as the train whistle blows. And the melting, faceless men line up in front of me, orderly, in rows of fours, and they link their melting arms as the slowly boil into bleached skeletons with grinning death's head skulls. Beneath the faceless, taut white skin, is a face of cavities and teeth, a skull face unseen through the white flesh now melting from the men in the elevator shaft. In their ruled lines of fours, the men, now a chorus of skeletal wraiths, all solemnly dance in unison. Their is a xylophone quality to their steps, an echoing steel sound that mixes with the train noise so far above us and creates a symphony of the empty industries. The skeleton men dance so solemnly that it whispers away and sense of joy in the movement. In their teeth, tiny diamonds shine, and in their eyes, diamond pupils sit so deep that they are only visible in brief reflective moments as the lights from above shine down. And the rows of four surround me in my cavernous tomb, still in eerie time with the train noise above us. It seems endless. The lights are hypnotic. The walls begin to turn to dry plaster and the cracks echo the drunken sounds from my wrists and ankles. Further below, there is an old library, a library of dusty periodicals and sepia toned funny books. I will find those librarians and I will make them read every word they've curated. I will not stand for anything less.

Ashes

And in the morning I woke to mist, and from the center of it appeared a great face, a face of brilliant blue pouring from the steam and glowing like the center of the sun. And about it there was a halo of death, of dead children, a ring of mummified remains in orbit around the great face. And the great face opened its mouth, a giant mouth, and it summoned me inside. And in the mouth of the great face there stood the expanse of a forest, a forest of the tallest pines reaching up to a sky of molding yellow. In the spires of pine, at the tip of each colossal tree, a halo of fire burned, and the whole of them together formed a web of fire in the sky. And as I stared into the web of fire burning into the hazy yellow sky, filling the hazy yellow sky with the thick inky smoke of ink diffused in dirty water. And the web of fire burnt out, slowly and the ashes that rained down from the sky filled my lungs. And those ashes were alive with some otherworldly spirit, some animating spirit and from the inside of my lungs the ashes, full of diminutive mouths, devoured me from the inside out. And as those living ashes, the ashes rained down from the sky's web of fire, my flesh began to gray and shrivel on my bones, and I was filled with all the terror of dying. And in the dying, I saw a ring of flowered eyes lord over my spirit, and I was afraid, for each eye was transparent like glass and filled with blood like a crystal of wine. And I whispered my fears to each eye, my secret fears, and each eye was imbued with the word of one fear. And from that word, each eye grew tendrils like an octopus or squid and those tendrils from each fear-instilled eye wrapped the last moments of my beating heart.

The Black Sky

The Black Sky goes by a hundred names. To begin with, we list them, in order of their relevance, in order of their power; when the Black Sky can hide from us, during the morning of Oros we can call to it with its Great Names, the first ten names, the Great Names. During the great night, the night of Aura, we can call to it with the last ninety names, names that were written in the Dream of Mariacallow. The Great Names were the first on her tongue, the tongue that spoke in the Dream and informed the mind of Genevieve, the tongue that spoke out the Plans of Mariacallow to the mind and the hand of Genevieve. And before Genevieve had built the lights of Oros and Aura, before there was day and night, there was the Black Sky, the First Night, the Long Night of Beginnings, the Open Sky, the Primal Sky, the Genesis Sky, the Void, the Starless Night, the Night Before Nights, the Secret Night. And those were the Great Names for the Black Sky; firstly "Black Sky," but "Black Sky" is not the proper name, but it is the Common name, and the name that Mariacallow herself would name it. She would say it, over and over again, in the Dream and she would know it, if she would speak it, as The Black Sky. It is the tongue of Mariacallow that breathes out the first ten names, the Great Names: The Black Sky, The First Night, The Long Night Of Beginnings, The Open Sky, The Primal Sky, The Genesis Sky, The Void, The Starless Night, The Night Before Nights, The Secret Night. These are the names by which you can call the Black Sky during the daylight, during the morning of Oros. You will call it, try to call it, and you must say each of the Great Names, in order, to call down the spirit of it. The spirit of it, the blackness of it, is not that of a man or a woman, but of space. It is darkness and space and it breathes and it thinks like a man or a woman. In the night time, in the night of Aura, there is an ease in the Black Sky, but it does not respond to the Great Names; it will ignore them in the darkness of Aura's dim light. And so to call it, you must call it by the Lesser Names; the Ninety Names. They are, in order, 11. Ira, 12. Iras, 13. Ita, 14. Itas, 15. Irasita, 16. Irasitas, 17. The Bell, 18. Oroauranox, 19. Noroauranox, 20. Belistas, 21. The Silence, 22. The Silencis, 23. The Silent Bell, 24. Hora, 25. Horanox, 26. Belis, 27. Iranox, 28. Expis, 29. Maria's Worry, 30. Maria's Dread, 31. Maria's Canvas, 32. The Heavy, 33. The Silent Scream, 34. The Colorless, 35. The Expanse, 36. Isora, 37. Isoras, 38. Isorata, 39. Isoratas, 40. Goldenleaven, 41. The Ebon, 42. The Waste, 43. The Beginnings, 44. The Chapter, 45. Cora, 46. Coras, 47. Corali, 48. Coralis, 49. Sitro, 50. Sitros, 51. The X, 52. The Loop, 53. The Empty, 54. The Great Empty, 55. The First Empty, 56. Orosnox, 57. Auranox, 58. Orosnoxaura, 59. The Shrill, 60. The Dreamscape, 61. The Dreaming, 62. The Dreamt, 63. The Dreamer's Panel, 64. The Dreamer's Canvas, 65. Nothing, 66. Notori, 67. Nortis, 68. Nortoris, 69. The Dreamer's End, 70. The Dreamer's Begin, 71. The Grand Begin, 72. The Grand March Empty, 73. The Grand March Beyond, 74. The Beyond, 75. The Black Elsewhere, 76. The Black Elsewhen, 77. The Black, 78. The Great Elsewhere's Beginning, 79. The Great Elsewhere's End, 80. The Great Elsewhere's Closet, 81. The Great Elsewhere's Stop, 82. Irifis, 83. Irifist, 84. The Unspoke, 85. The Silent Carol, 86. The Elsedark, 87. The Elseblack, 88. The Drift, 89. All In All.