Entropy and Winter
by China Krys Darrington
copyright © 2001 - 2007 China Krys Darrington. All rights reserved. Do not use without permission.

The cigarette crackled and hissed, competing against the rumbling sound from the two structures in the distance as they erupted into fire and began to rage in flame.  The raging burn.  The resulting clove smoke lingered about her head, tantalizing her senses to engage in the memories.  But there is no time for memory here, she serves a purpose and that directive is commencing, here.  Now.   Her eyes closed like the lids of a reptile guarding itself against the hot desert wind.   A set of headphones droned the aggressive tempo of PWEI “Ich Bien Der Auslander” into her ears as she watched the wind dance increasingly around her, an unselected ally to aid in the task of destruction at hand.<

it can’t happen here

…but take a look around

…at the cities

…at the towns…

“…the knife

…the gun,

…broken bottle,

…petrol bomb…

…there is no sleeping when the watchmen come…”

She sucked, taking a long drag on the clove kretek.  Exhaling, to draw the smoke back into her nose.  Her memory battling her to remember the heavy threads of opium smoke she once found herself entangled to.  She remembered Alexi Michael. Her intimate companion and mentor.  A teacher so swift in his action and discipline that her head spun to keep up with him.  In time, however she pushed herself to be a willing and capable partner.  He was a teacher, sent for a time, to train her, and when she had completed this phase of her education he had withdrawn and she was forced to use every new facet of her self-discipline to keep from groveling in his pursuit. 

The towers evoked a huge explosion of fiery gas.  The belly of the dark tower exploded outward, sending steel, flesh and daggers of glass outward across the Middle City.  The remaining floors above the amputated section began to swagger drunk as the building lost stability and began its final collapse into entropy.  The air for a mile around was sucked in and up through the structure.  It was reaching out for anything, even the empty air to prevent its demise.

The act was futile.  The building gave up and came down.   Floor upon floor, the building collapsed, smashing the floor beneath it.  The concrete dissolved into dust and belched out.  A great cloak came to claim anything in its path that it could envelop and bring with it into the shard realm.  It would not go silently.   It would not go without taking as many victims as possible with it. 

“That was built into the very nature of the design,” Ani thinks to herself. 

She was too high up in the cliffs to see the individuals who were watching the inferno, now scrambling to any sanctuary they could find as the great walls of dust came to claim them.

As the second of the buildings began the same collapse as the first Ani turned her back on the final death troughs of the finished structure.  Her work here was complete.  She adjusted the headset on her ears and retreated back across the hills towards the South American brush and into the jungle.

She would walk the rest of the day, throughout the night and approaching the new dawn before she returned to the Voluhunda tribal people in the heart of the dense lush groves.

The Voluhunda people were a sophisticated tribe of primitives.  They knew majick and medicine and had a basic understanding of nature and power.  The accepted Ani and her satchels of seeds and oils as a gift from their gods and treated her with respect.  Ani was a sorcerer.  Ani was a rare breed of Verbena fire-witch, and High Death Mage.  She was spiritual, trained, agricultural and most of all respectful of the Voluhunda and their ways.

Her return signaled a feast and dined on the roasted flesh of a member of their society who served the purpose of providing protein to the members of their organism.  They nourished the group and therefore were taken back into the society as higher-spirits.  Ani had no reservations partaking of the feast.  Her previous days activities left little time for eating and she was famished. 

The Voluhunda wanted her every comfort cared for and sent companions to her bedside to keep her entertained.  Ani however was in no need of entertainment and was sound asleep in less than twenty minutes.

Ani Dreams…

Horizon opens to her. Ani walks the Shining Path, as she always does.  Never expecting a destination, it is the walk where the wisdom lies.  It never ends.  Horizon is the realm, which in years past, all of those that could provide the information, education and training her kind needed; the elders, advisors and high adepts retreated into and vanished from her waking world.  They were beyond her and she, like most of the others left behind, felt abandoned as they tried to make sense of the awakened world they found themselves in, without guidance.

“Suspend expectation, Ani.  Reservations lead to resentment and that can serve no purpose.”  She reminded herself as she walked the Path.

The Path entered the Amnion, the fluid suspension of time and space.  The Void.  Ani had been here so many times.  She walked here as a child.  Her reality shifted even then.  All children have the majick.  They only begin to lose hold on it when reality intercedes.  Convinced she was dreaming all the strange dreams, Ani was one that was born awake…but that didn’t make it any easier.

From time to time those that had taken residence in Horizon would request a Conclave and open a portal for a visit.  She would be unable to refuse.  All other avenues would cease to function, a time loop replaying itself over and over with strange changes in predictable results to cause and effect.  Eventually the paths of order would cease even to exist until Horizon and its cause had been served.  The majick that Horizon held was much stronger than any single mage possessed.  There was no use in fighting it if they wanted her.

So she walked into Horizon anxious to “get it over.” A slight resentment surfaced and she recognized that she felt like she was fighting someone else’s battles for them.  As Ani stepped out of the Amnion fluid she was in the only place anyone not residing in Horizon could find themselves. The Conclave was a hall.  A concave oval-shaped hall with towering spires jutting from the floor like ribs.  Each surface created from the combination of powers the minds of the high maji held.  The nine elders, the Council of Nine, were seated directly before her.  The rest of the immaculate krewe seated in a semi-circular stadium around them.  Seated like the Judges and Juries.  The Cone surrounded her.   She was removed from participating directly with Horizon and felt as if she were being presented to them like poultry trussed and presented for a dinner party.  They would ask their questions and evoke their tests and she would perform the requisite duties required.

She long ago has made her decision to be a part of the greater scheme of things.  She was awake, and having surrendered to that, she knows there is no place for peaceful ignorance. 

“Take your places,

Chose your sins…

Everyone loses,

No one wins…

I’ve seen the future…

And this

Is how

It begins…”

They begin…

“Ani, Descended from Verbena NightShade, your blood has within it the lineage of Eloine and Heylel Thoabath, ye have traces of Verbena, Solificati and Euthantos within ye.  Ye have fire and discipline.  Ye have the training and the education.  What are your acts and motives?"

“Oh fuck!” She thinks.  “How I hate it when they speak with the “ye’s and yore’s.  Makes me think of being on trial…  I guess that is exactly what this may be…”  Her mind wanders detached with the force of severity they attempt.  She responds:

“My actions of Correspondence and Force have triggered the Entropy in a building designed, constructed, and created to break those three functions in both the Sleepers and others who are awakened…   I serve, as I always have, the Balance…”

“And how do you function…” A council member asks.

Ani found her mind spinning. That inner voice coached her; “Now they issue the test of motive.   Be careful here.  There are no mentors left to explain such haughty protocol.  Be completely honest with your motives.  Tread carefully with the words you choose to create to explain them.  No use trying to cover it up, they will see right through us.  They already know the answer to the questions; they are testing to see how we will answer.  They ask to see if the accomplishment should be an asset to our qualifications or a disgrace.

Ani closed her eyes.  She pushed out that white light of the force of spirit, mind and prime.  She urged them up and around her crown charka.  She pushed them to unify and send out a flowing energy of purity.  Called upon that purity to use her mouth as a hollow bone for the truth and cause.  She saw that energy swirl nebulous above her head.  The energy increased its flow and the circumference flattened out with centripetal acceleration.  Finally the energy burst and the pulse of the combined forces fell over Ani’s closed eyes and coated her in serenity.

Her mouth opened and spoke:

“I am Chela Ani.  Before even my Diksha, from when I became what I am I had the acute sight of the Awakened.  Your own forces pricked my energies at six-years of age and formed my experiences so that I would best serve the Wheel.  My talents lay in my suspension of expectation, my attention to training and detail, and most importantly, my ability to participate fully in the Shard Realms.  I, Ani of the Verbena. Ani of the Euthanato., Ani of the Balance.  I am able to participate fully with he Qlippothic energies, entities and spheres, which most Mages will not touch, or even fully realize.  I am Ani and I serve the Balance.  Those that wish to eradicate the force created by the Dark Tower and its sibling Gold Tower.  That which wishes to engineer it’s own self-serving reality, custom fit with members of Traditions and accompanying Sleepers into their own form of energy.  This would unmake the duality of our world and for the benefit of the Tellurian; my work serves as equilibrium.

“And what about the economic, physical and traumatic effects on the Tellurian?  Not to mention the resulting paradox of such vulgar majick?” asked a member of the council.

“The Tellurian is self-correcting…I serve the Balance.  I am Vrata…  Paradox is nullified for the forces used were basic.  Explosives are not majickal weapons, just the sense used to apply them correctly.  I blew a fucking building to Hell, anyone could do that.”

“You may go”

Exit…

Ani ponders on the walk back why she was even called.  They already knew her will, her work and her way.  Formalities.  She shrugs off the expectation that she will ever understand them.  Suspending her child ego, which yearns for those members of Horizon to come back to use and help us understand that which we must do.  They will not…  She knows that more than she knows why she serves the Balance. 

Out of Dream…

In the Jungle, awake and alone.  Ani uses the force of Time and Correspondence to weave herself into a new physical pattern.  She is in the Monarch club, plunked down conveniently next to Maynard D’Keynees.  Aglow in flaming red reptile skin jacket and pants, his torrid flame of hair raising a hint at his infernal aspirations. 

“What luck, I think.  What a better place could I find myself deposited?  The Monarch substantial sound system is broadcasting a lovely rendition of VNV Nation’s “Beloved”

The music combines it’s pulsating energy with the release she feel after a ordeal.  Ani wants only to be bathed in pleasurable sensation.  Her eyes scan the club.  Lush with scarlet velvet sheaths of fabric billowing from the walls.  She appreciates the clubs regal interior.  The metal beams of the industrial interior are black-powder coat.  The grid of floor the patrons dance upon is pattern.  They allow themselves to mesh in various stages of ecstatic dance.  She watches, with longing, those that have already succumbed to the release the music provides.  She longs for the ability to connect with the others she watches as they communicate with motion and alcohol and flesh. 

As much as she yearns to be like these, that she watches, she knows that this life is not for her.  It is not a part of the path that she walks.  Her path is her own and a community would not serve the Balance well.  She accepted her place, and with a sigh, she ties herself back to this world, with knowledge of her purpose. 

Looking to her direct right she sees Maynard, sitting and watching with detached observation the crowd.  A few minutes pass and he finally notices her sitting at his left hand.  He give a quick smile, not sure how the Vrata had come so close to him without his senses being pricked into awareness.  Ani gives a respectable nod of the head in salute.  He turns his head back to survey his domain. 

Ani continues watching him.  She looks at his profile and begins to process his structure.  His head is crowned with a crazed mass of red hair, standing defiant against gravity or sweat.  His skin is pale and smooth and not a trace of whisker is present.  Maynard always makes a fine specimen, if not a peculiar one.   His nose is sleek and angular, like a finely forged dagger.  The nose of generations of proper Midwestern breeding.  His jaw also reflects his genes.  It juts provocatively and conveys the strength of the blood flowing in the veins.  His back is straight and resting on the booth on the periphery of the dance floor.  He’s aligned slightly back arms winged open and his hands dangle from the top of the booth casually.  He screams arrogance and self-confidence.  He is the aristocracy.  He wears it well.

She is moved to action and she removes the vodka gimlet Maynard is sipping from his hand and replaces it into its iced container.  Without words both hands grab the lapels of his jacket, and pulls herself astride his lap. Slightly above him she lowers her head to align her nose with his.  Her mouth exhales Parma into his throat.  Silent woven majicks of seduction leaves her root charka, through Da’ath, the throat and out the mouth.  Velvet ropes of energy eagerly accepted by the magnetic force of the Red Knight. 

He responds, slightly amused by this spontaneous display of yearning, and slightly expecting it, by forcing himself forward to return the kiss.  Maynard’s energies are electric with spark.  To others, they are only lavish clubgo’ers in the process of making out.  Ani needs the release.  He needs her energy.  It’s a mutual relationship.  Again, there are no expectations. 

He begins his invocations.  It’s a silent web created for in majick there is silence.  They are obvious in their passions, but hidden in their actuality.  This is sex majick.  This is the exchange of primal Chi/Ka.  He has one, and Ani the other.  Her batteries are low and in dire need of a recharge.  Maynard is the petrol station.

Prana. The Breath.  It provides life-giving exchange of air vital for plants and animals.  The poisons expelled by one species, another finds themselves dependant on for their survival.  A purging from one individual grants another existence for another day.  Prana give us the ability to use words.  For communication.  For weapons.  Prana can be united with Will to form Pneuma.  Another weapon.  Pneuma is a Will word breathed into animation that can be hurled with results like a grenade…or an atomic detonation.

Mages are not content with only the physical.  Adopting a Sleeper for this purpose would prove no benefit.  Mages need stimulus on all levels.  Lovers who can provide the necessary attention to detail and restraint are at a premium.  This is Sex Majick.  Maynard continues the seduction Ani started with breath when he reaches out with his Mind.  Gently, with curiosity he taps into her.  He does this with the care of someone undressing a lover to which they want to explore, without arousing any of the daemons of hurt and betrayal that may lie within.  It’s with this consideration that she grants him an entrance.  The protocol has been served.  The respect and avenue is concrete.  Open the gates and allow this guest entrance to the Shining Path she holds.

She feels him enter at the base of her skull.  His essence grabs her as a hand would slide up through the hair at the base of the head and grasp the skull.  It is gentle and forceful and secure.  Ani lets herself slip into this embrace, appreciating the sanctuary, however temporary it may be.  As she slides, he sniffs a need to achieve the oblivion and Maynard, her Red Knight raises his fire energy to the occasion. 

He clicks fittingly into an ego.  The ego that Ani adores.  He becomes the desert wind to blanket and barrage her body.  He becomes the cooperative aggressor.  He teeth latch onto exposed flesh, delivering bites that stink and echo with sensation. 

“Teach my flesh that it is still alive Maynard.” Ani whispers with no words.

It is a delicate dance of hissing breath and biting teeth.  The air expelled is charged with romantic malice and sucked back in with hungry fury.  “He is coating me in a myth.”  Her mind languishes.  Letting her slip into a warm cocoon where she can form scabs on the dark energy resonating inside.  It is done with a form of love, strange to most familiar with its concept.  She sucks in on the fire energy like vital air.  When her lungs have been filled she delivers a hard exhale spilling forth the poison she harbors. 

“Release.  Expel.  Get it all out Ani, there is only a fraction of time where we can save ourselves from the darkness.  You know that which you must do.  You know that which you must be.  Get it out.”  Her head swims and the walls swirl.  She grows dizzy with the motion and begins the comfortable slip into the void.

Still slipping, Maynard takes his physical body and stands to rises out of the booth they were occupying. His right hand pulling her left to follow.  Ani stands, anticipation of what will come next.  Maynard has always been able to create an experience unparallel.  She wants to see the plays he creates with his imagination.  She enjoys the theatre.

The beats bullet from the bass bins and thrash their tempo.   Redirecting the pulse of the heart.  The serrated edges of music snap Ani’s reptilian ego into alertness.  The reptile smiles and flicks her split tongue in endorsement.

Maynard leads them through the bodies glistening with wet smoke and sweat. They press through the crowd feeling the ambient energy resonating from their frenzy.   They pass a doorway and disappear down a short corridor.  The room he’s elected is illuminated by ultraviolet light.  The inverse world is Ani’s.  Hey minds eye perceives only that which is not there.  He has chosen a space where she can make the world a part of her reality for a short while.  A playroom for the Qlippothic-Vrata-Verbena-Death mage to relax and unwind.

Black.  Silver.  Violet.  Indigo are the hues this room plays to.  Perfect.  The Red Knight is changed to blood.  Crimson King.  The room is situated in the reflection of the sound of the nightclub and the room has essentially become a speaker cone.  The music’s pattern is felt deep in the chambers of her flesh and the sound resonates to evoke the reptilian machine.  It must explore.

Ani find herself lying in repose against a wall of overstuffed pillows.  The sofa is black and comfortable in a way that cradles the soul.  She feels like a caterpillar sitting on the mushroom from Wonderland, smoking a contented hookah. 

“Whoooooooo areeeeeeeeeee youuuuuuuuuuuuu???”  Asks the caterpillar.

She is cradled by the soft constraints of the sofa’s womb.  Maynard stands before her, evaluating how to proceed.  The delicate nature of sex among the enlightened makes foreplay a tedious effort.  The exact nature of their calling makes them hold back from accidentally treading into dangerous waters they don’t even know exist within. 

The reptile, unconcerned with the possible breeches of protocol, grows tired of waiting and strikes.  The body of Ani lurches from its previous repose and snatched the flourish of Crimson where he stood.  Striking like a Komodo dragon on her prey she directs her force around and Maynard who now finds himself back down in the same spot Ani lay quiet a moment before. 

On top, Ani’s energy is directed to him.  Bathing him in her succulent honey and steam.  Exhale.  He takes the impossibly long slender tendrils he calls fingers of his right hand, index and middle.  He makes the high majician sign of Heru-Rau and presses them to Ani’s heart.  They slide easily through her essence and weave their way into her flesh.  His hand follows, which he balls up inside of her chest to feel the beating muscle it rides against.  After a moment she feels his fingers unfurl to slide effortlessly around the pumping thing.

Ani is a Vrata.  A Chakravanti Euthanatoi.  She has been in death so many times there is no fear of dying or hurting.  There is only comfort that someone would want to share in this futile beating thing for a moment.  She returns the exchange by reaching out with ropey tendrils of energy up through his nose under the skull and around his brain.  Once in place, they fan out like veiny wings and sink through the outer muscle stretched tightly over the cortex.  This skive of tissue prevents the complex secrets of Maynard’s mind from leaking out.   She sinks the extensions in his Mind.  Those fans undulate imperceptibly to let the intricate Mind mage stretch out the tightly protected secrets it holds and relax itself. 

Waves of relaxation wash over Maynard.  She perceives him gracefully alighting and aligning each charka.  Root, navel, heart, throat, mouth, brow, crown…  Each surges their primal colour and splits open a force of energy that is to be revered.  This is the orgasm of the enlightened.  After a moment, he shakes the fans off and out and his eyes meet Ani’s.  Slivers of green.  Green of envy.  Green of jealously.  Green of prosperity.  Green of fertility.  Maynard’s physical form says a lot about his ability as a Mage.  Many majickians create a physical formation, or perception of formation as a cover for their abilities.  Maynard is one who wears Majick on his sleeve.  He is what he is, and to fuck with what others think about it.

His eyes say to Ani  “Hell, that was phantastic.  Thanks, but how about we take this a bit farther than just the esoteric calisthenics and into that place of fear which we both, so adore?”  Her objective is a release of the energies she is holding in.  To create a space of oblivion where she can deposit that which will become toxic to her, if she harbors it too long. 

Fear is something hard to evoke in a person who’s actively participated in what Ani has become.  Fear is an catalytic antagonist to the narcotic effects of her efforts.  The Crimson King wants to play tour guide to this place of deliverance.  Can I get a hallelujah?

With an expectation unprecedented she evenly replies; “Yes, let’s go there”

Maynard is from the Order of Reason.  The seventh son of a seventh son of a seventh son.  The Triunite.  His power is inherited and honed, by practice, to perfection.  But like all those of privileged birth, he often treats his power as a plaything that can never be taken from him.  He is a prerequisite gentleman of protocol.  A provocateur of standards.  He is sleek and talented and it is always a privilege to watch him breed new work from his alchemy and allusion. 

It’s like watching a stage magician perform the classic works of illusion.  It is trickery, but it is much, much more.  Being an audience to these classic and powerful works increased Ani’s appreciation and awe of the High Majicks of Reason.

Maynard rises from the sofas.  He brushes his clothes off and prepares his form for the work at hand.  Gazing around the room observing it for other signs of life.  When they entered they weren’t inspecting it for inhabitants, and they have reached a stage where they would like some privacy. 

This is not for your eyes. 

The room is indeed empty and with a quick whip-like flourish of his left hand he seals off the door.  Ani knows from experience that anyone on the outside will fail to perceive that there is a doorway. We are alone and safe.

Maynard centers himself.  His angular arms are raised in a tight V.  His legs are close together.  His head lolls backward and his throat vibrates resonance and the fire is drawn to him.  The energy around him singes with arcs of yellow-orange electricity.  It is splendid and graceful and Ani realizes she is watching a greatness unknown.  Potential.  Maynard has made himself into a Correspondence sigil.  He resonates.  The fire arcs glow and spin off of him in turbulent flames.  The room itself breaks into fire and begins to rage as an inferno.  There is heat as it all begins to melt.  Ani hears the high-pitch wail of the majick as it begins to tear distinct rifts through the walls and rend apart this realm to remanifest itself into something…new.  She hears the murmured heartbeat of the majick droning to work the shift in a reality. Into something…different.  The flames rage around us, walls melting. 

Maynard stays perfectly still with the resonance.  Astral beings sense the break in the prisons which hold them and stretch their ambiguous bodies up and out to see what the commotion is.  Those entities from the ninth level are stirring, using this working portal to feed on any scrap of life energy.   Ani taps out a kretek from a cigarette pack and lights it, sitting back to enjoy the show. 

The beings; astral, soulless, daemons, and nephandi swirl up against them, with each touch she feels each of their stories.  She learns their plight.   The vain excuses for what they are.  Ani knows there are no excuses.  She knows this to be the genesis of their state.  They have been trapped in the lusting, the questing for powers they wanted.  They hungered for thing that would never satisfy or nourish them.  They cry out in self-pity.  Ani wants none of it.  She ignores the wails and false claims.  Ani knows what they want, they want in her.  Their desires hurl themselves against her in an effort to worm their way into her essence.  To claim the ferocious energy as their food and subjugate it.  It feels like standing before a desert flare and the wind suddenly blows the ashes and embers of the fire into her face. She flings them aside and they cling like napalm to her face.  She burns and become the ash.  Her carbon entity fits over her soul like a rubber skin, and she finds it’s difficult to breath.  Movement is staggering.  Smoking becomes pointless and she let the kretek she’s lit to become extinct. 

Maynard is murmuring something. His head still upturned to the darkness in flame.  Ani senses a shift and finds the floor is crumbling.  Matter is turning to entropy as the physical is disposed of.   Sand filtering through a bottle becomes more rapid, the edges of their peripheries slides up around them before the black holes of the Void rush up to take the two explorers beyond.

Before the fall, Maynard tilts his eyes to meet Ani’s.  He is crazed in his invocation. One eyebrow cocked in an “Having fun now?” gaze. 

Ani smiles; her last subtle smile and they go down.

The Void Embrace…

When the Void claims you, you just have to hold on to your socks.  It’s an endless fall through a narrow channel.  The slime of everything touches you,. It scrapes everything out of you.  Together they fall through the Void, pressed together against everything else in the Metaverse.  Leftover or untapped energies of Mind, Matter, Forces, Life, Correspondence, Entropy, Spirit, Time, Akasha and Prime are pressed together in this birth canal of no-thing. 

Maynard is liquid fire. Ani is black ash.  Alpha and Omega merge.  His fire is biting substance from her carbon.  Through the Void they tumble into composite sand.  It tickles.  It itches.  Ani reminds herself that at this junction it is most important to have no reservation.  The ordeal requires one to maintain no-mind, to participate fully and without hesitation.  Any objections, no matter how minute would forever alter the reassembly of her essence into whatever lies beyond this ordeal. 

Combined with the polaris energy of Maynard, to either of them, this would invariably prove to be their undoing.  This is an exercise in precise trust. 

Forget the notion of safe sex.  Impossible.

City of Dust and Fire…

The Void is gone…ordeal passed.  They’ve been deposited into the City of Pyramids.  This is the entrance to the Abyss that all mages must traverse to test the annihilation of their ego.  The city of Pyramids appear deserted, but beware, it is inhibited by the energies of those magi that failed the Ordeal. 

They hesitated.  They expected.  They held an uncertain breath during their walk into the Abyss and in doing so coated their soul as an incomplete.  A failure.  An abomination.  Their yearning souls want redeemed and are willing to extract it out of the marrow of the pure that come seeking.  They feast on all the new walkers searching for a glimpse of the strength they needed to complete their task.  Their envy and bitterness is palatable and they will do anything to take others into their fold.  Failure cries for bigger failure to appease their irreproachable guilt.

Maynard and Ani have merged during the Void.  They are united as one tumbling mass.  The muscles and sinew from one mage is muted together with the bone and organ of the other.  A quiet moment is resolved and Ani feels inertia overcome by action as Maynard withdraws his form from this union.  Muscles and tendon unwrap and slide themselves out and through bone like unwrapping a tangled mass of yarn.  As his unfolds himself and stands aside me Ani notices his now wearing his Phoenix avatar.  He still has his human appearance, but is surrounded by orange-red fire and is winged with the raging gases erupting as wings from his back.  He hovers over the dusty ground.  Ani looks to her form and see that she is the reptile.  She sees her taloned feet and fingers, her tongue is split and has adopted her sense of smell.  Her eyes slit into the diamond pupil and lidded.  Her skin is scaled with metallic blue-gray ovals, which undulate as she moves.  They speak with the mind tones; no words are used here in the City of Dust and Fire.

“Lets Play” says he.

“What shall well we play”? The reptile hisses in return.

His answer is in action.  He swoops down on her.   Picking her up with his taloned feat and soaring high up into the air above the city.  He has her just below the scruff on the reptiles neck and she scrambles with terror as they rise higher and higher into the air.  When they’ve reached an impossible height he lets go.  She flails in clumsy reptile flight as she plummets down towards the spiky juts of bone erupting from the ground. 

A moment of clarity provides her with the notion that the height was necessary for the dance…it provided her with enough time to experience the terror and recapture the necessary auspex to grasp the forces of correspondence and time to her.  As she hurls like a bullet to the ground she reworked the words as necessary for survival. 

She caved space in upon itself and found herself falling above the Phoenix who was still beating its wings in ascent.  She gave him little time to prepare as her mass forced herself upon his flight.  When her body touched his flame she reworked my mouth to the wanting jaws of the Komodo and sunk the gnashing teeth into the Phoenix neck.  She tasted his electric blood as he screeched out in pain and horror.  How dare she!  Next she reworked the realm from too solid sand with spires of pyramids to rack themselves upon, to water.  Locked in a death grip she pulled the killing energy to her and plunged the firebird into its depths.  Ani used qlippothic majick to increase her weight and mass to that of a leviathan.  The great sea monster of teeth and rage engaged as she took the firebird into the depths. 

Obsidian water quenched the bird’s flame eliminating its source power.  The pressure increased rapidly on the descent.  It crushed out the available air reserve in its lungs.  Every cell of his being was being pressed to give up its survival.  Their forms brushed up with other sea creatures yearning to witness the fall of the precious firebird.  Ani’s rage frenzied as they went down….

As the final putrid air was being forced from hollows of the regal phoenix’s lungs the world was remade again. 

Maynard and Ani stood on the dusty ground of ash and bone in the City of Da’ath, in their traditional forms.

“Good game” He spoke

Again, the small subtle smile…

“Lets go fuck with Set.” He says and runs of into the city…

Oh shit, Ani thinks.  Set is a melancholy and spiteful fellow.  He clings to his desolation and curses and wants nothing of a companion, much less an interloper.  Ani has revealed herself to him often, invoking his energy and partaking of any knowledge he wishes to divulge.  Ani reveres Set.  Appreciates his distance.  His ability to continue in his destruction.  She seeks to protect this lonely king.  Set is not one to “fuck with” for fun.  There are plenty of old codger souls here to toy with if Maynard in the mood.

Ani runs after him, hoping to convince him of an alternate plan…

She finds him in an old throne room from some forgotten dynasty or kingdom.  There is a pitiful semblance of importance long past it’s prime.  Ani draws a sympathy for these people.  Abandoned.  They are a thrown-away sort.  They hit their mark and faded from glory.  Ani doesn’t want to taunt these people.  The losers of the universe. 

Maynard on the other hand, is that kind of privileged sort who doesn’t have the ability to empathies with those that are has-beens.  That is not of his order.  He has climbed into the dusty throne of some disheveled monarch and weaving Manas and Vac, Mind and Speech.  He creates a seduction.  He sees the disapproval of Ani and seeks to manipulate her will, for the sake of entertainment.  This is known as arm-wrestling to the awake.  My will can beat up your will.  Sometimes you win, sometimes you run away. 

Manas and Vac are his forte.  His mind is strong and his speech clear.  He weaves for the weaving.  He doesn’t need this to happen.  He is just curious to see if he can bind Ani to his call.  His Majick is strong and Ani is waking towards him, her physical arousal strangely increasing. 

Ani thinks as she walks.  She notices that she does want to partake, but not out of disrespect.  And she realizes that she still haven’t achieved her oblivion. 

Maynard sits astride the throne and brings himself to his full brilliant russet hue.  He raises an index finger and uses a frequency of power bound to a word to call Ani to him.  Her legs betray her resistance.  The tendrils of his majick have bound her to his will and he’s clicked as the assertive seducer. 

“He calls, I come.  I know this game…” Ani shuffles on.

Resonating like a scream no one can hear he vibrated his need to her.  He wants to reunite himself at the place where he began and needs Ani to complete the regression. 

“He wants me to unmake him.  Such a fucking junkie.  She thinks.   Aren’t we all?”

He creates a stone slab in front of the throne chair and Ani approaches it.  She crawls spider-like upon it.  She perches.  He stands.  Preparing himself to walk to join her.  Ani sucks matter inward.  Catching him in a force of magnetic inversion and he flies, spread out like an angel, to her.  She breathes in on the air; and allows the darkness to permeate her.  Her own resonance combines within, as the abyss becomes me.  She wears its chaos well. 

She ritually undresses him from his skins.  Lovingly and with adoration she unbuttons, unsnaps and unzips with care and delicacy.  Lavish with encouraging ardor she slides him out from his encumberments.  She could easily unmanifest the clothes, but there is a ritual that has begun.  No need to side step this dance.  Every facet is part of the action.  She unfurls the last of his coverings and he lies naked and subdued on the stone slab and climbs her spider body to top him. 

Her flesh touches his, combining the polarities of their energies for stimulus.  Ani descends again to get nose to nose with Maynard.  She smells her essence, drinking it deep into her soul before she begins. 

Ani recites her phrase of origin:

“I promise to consume you slowly, and there will be no unkind pain…”

And so it begins…

There are kisses so reverent and deep the flesh seems to melt.  Ani licks, taking the saliva to coat every inch of his flesh.  His face.   His neck.  Over the sparse red fur on his chest.  The navel where she draws out energy from this charka to eviscerate him.  To allow his own Will to form the bond.  Ani weaves the Abyss Web over him and catches him like an insect morsel for her spider lust. 

When his is firmly bound she quiets herself for a spell.  She lets her full weight rest upon him.  She is listening deep for the heartbeat.  That metronome which binds all of us to the only true measure of time.  Ani rubs her fingers over the web to lull him, her fingers delicately brush over his eyes to close them.  She hushes him with a low frequency mantra emitting from her chest.  She continue until she is assured that their heartbeats have merged in syncopation.  This will allow her to keep track of his vital energy while she begets her work. 

She positions herself on top of the cocoon that is Maynard, she makes sure that the charkas are aligned.  Forehead to forehead.  Crown to crown.  Brow to brow.  Mouth to mouth. Throat to throat.  Heart to heart. Navel to navel. Root to root.  From her body comes the shards from which her kind are both feared and revered.  The thorns of the Vrata extend forth.  Their pointed black needles enter each of his charkas and root him to the stone mass beneath him.

From there Ani can peel off, layer by layer, his experience and Will while holding him together by the combined forces and energies or his primal essence. 

She begins with the Abyss Web, and when it is split and peeled, his skin comes with it.  The underlying mass of tissue and muscle seeps out unencumbered. 

“Set me free” he hisses

From there she unties the layers of muscle and tissue.  Unweaving them with anatomical precision.  Layer by layer the complex human form is unmade, leaving a skeleton surrounding the internal organs. 

His heart still beats, the kidney processes uric acid, the bowels process the Thai dinner earlier consumed by Maynard.    Ani looks at the bones covered with clotting blood and sticky fat deposits and feels the ecstatic hunger that pricks her primordial need.  She presses herself forward between the ribcage, face down into the thumping mass of organs buzzing like an active hive and licks the bones clean from the gore of the human condition.  Then when every scrap of meat and system has freed itself from the calcium pylons and the bones are drying white in the dry desert air she continues.  Carefully as Anubis with his canopic jars, she removes the internal organs of Maynard and proceeds to eat them. 

Each of them, into her they go.  Digesting the essence they hold.  She pulls a fold of bowel and intestine out and lets it slide down into her gullet.  She tastes the Pad Thai and the envy Maynard’s knows.  The stomach is empty as it hungers for the change.  She takes this into her knowing him intimately.  She removes the spleen, the liver, the kidneys.  One by one she performs the rite of Unmaking.  Letting him recede into his original core.  The spark from where he was made.  It is a regression therapy that only a few are able to give. 

When Maynard is a husk, his skeleton lies on the stone cemented by the small circular sparks of the charkas that hold his true essence together.  They are bound together by these.  It is Ani’s time to engage these united charkas.  She starts at the root.  The energies she draws to her are red.  Blood flushes out of the root charka, overflowing the stone bed and covering the ground.  It meshes into a paste made with the ashes and bone-dust of the fallen.  Ani thinks of the story of Lucifer MorningStar and his quest for divine light.  His fall, so fast and quick that his tattered wings are useless to beat an opposing ascent.  In her minds eye, Ani sees him Fallen in the blood-ash, lying forlorn and she binds this image to use as she finally engage in the sexuality of the rudimentary act. 

All base actions nudge the levels surrounding it.  When the root is stimulated the stem begins to grow.  The roots sink into the expanses of the ground for nourishment and satisfaction.  Ani engages the charkas and resonates.  She slams the kinetic energy into them from the No-Thing and Kether.  She reaches up and into the Ain Soph.  She kicks the awakened charkas into overdrive and forces them back from their shocked withdrawal.  When the resonance peaks to a vibrating frenzy she tilts over into the orgasmic brilliance and expels each part, which she has consumed, back to the skeleton’s husk. 

Each piece of Maynard, each part which makes up the whole is purged from Ani’s core.  Invoking with each spasm a memory and experience.  Ani learns about Maynard’s first memory; a landscaper mowing the lawn around a fountain at the family estate.  Ani sees the dog that bit into his cheek at three and left him with a long-covered revulsion of the canine species.  Ani witnessed his older cousin, Arike, teach him how to masturbate in a pool cabana on a vacation when he was eight.  Ani felt the first awakened sex he had, at fourteen with a schoolmate and knew he could rip her apart when he came.  She felt the humiliation of his father’s brood for sullying his reputation with his debauchery.  She saw his soul as it unfurled itself when he tumbled in intimate love with the wrong girl and was pulled away from her, as she was condemned to Unmaking.  She felt him repel his emotion as a weakness and his acceptance as the great standard bearer to his House.  She saw his unyielding quest for more…a quest she knows too much about.

An once her lover was remade in flesh and organ and bone, still tethered to her by our alignment, he opened his eyes which had transformed themselves to her own reptilian slits, completed by his own brilliant green.   Quick as the komodo which grappled him earlier, he flipped Ani onto her back and proceeded to fuck her so overwhelmingly that her oblivion was unquestionable.

In this frenzy of oblivion she unharnessed herself from the explosives so carefully prepared.  She unlaced the burdens of the secrets held to her actions.  She unpacked the belt clips of emotional removal.  She tapped that little child inside her awake and told her “hurry, there isn’t much time, go out and play in the chaos before it’s over”

 There were needles and electricity.  Leather harness straps and threaded whips notched with metal proven to raise ire and resentment.  There were factories of children to be tormented that they could only grow up to be perfect prodigal killers.  There were mazes of the lost and fallen.  Ani sees their forlorn faces beneath the storms, without their skin.  She sees the mauled beasts of that which were like her at one time, but somehow got off the Shining Path and into that which would consume. 

She shimmied down the rope that would save her from herself and when she got to the last fragment of rope and dangled over the pit of nothingness.  She swung.  She grappled with the original dilemma of every mage.  When faced with an opportunity for true inescapable oblivion, and faced with the combined knowledge and experience that which we are, do we fling ourselves into that last escape and be done with it? 

Ani vomited.  She expelled the chunks of those possessions inside her, which she no longer needed.  They had served their purpose and now they needed safely disposed of.  She purged and purged herself of those experiences, memories, thoughts and energies, which if I kept in reservation would breed like a bacteria inside her and turn her into one of the others…

When she finally had gotten the last of the yellow slimy bile out of her, and was swinging by one hand from the tendril that tethered her to everything else, she sighed.  Her left hand reached out and up, grabbing onto the rope and she began the ascent back up into…

…The Monarch

The room was exactly as they left it.  Maynard’s pants unbuttoned and around his thighs, still wearing his shirt and jacket, smoking as he withdrew his spent penis from her.  The faded and worn black leather pants were around Ani’s knees and she shimmied up to make herself more presentable.  With a zip and a snap she leaned forward to take another kretek and grabbed Maynard’s lit cigarette to ignite her own.

“Hey” he protested

Ani took a long drag on the clove and relaxed her muscles back into the comfort of the sofa once again.

“That was fucking awesome.  It’s too bad you’re a fucking death-mage, we could really have a good thing together.”  Says Maynard

“Yeah, well it’s too bad you’re a prissy little papa’s boy in the established royalty of our wicked ways.  I’m the henchmen for your Daddy’s plots, so there’s no mingling with the hired help”

“Yeah.  I know that all to well, but it’s good to get this out of our system every so often so we can carry on with our respected duties.” He says with an air of distraction.

“Chakradharma!  Damn it all to Hell!” “You can say that again”

“Good to see you Ani.”

“Same to you Maynard”

And the Wheel turns…

---

copyright © 2001 - 2005 China Krys Darrington. All rights reserved. Do not use without permission.