From the Chronicles of Lupa Volume 1 - Ruby Tuesday

by P. Julian

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Revised edition produced 2017

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From the Chronicles of Lupa Volume 1 - Full Text Section 5

Chapter 18 - Here Is Thy Victory

FOR some moments after his decision was made Jesse sat quietly on the hard rock, with Ruby silently holding his hand.

As Jesse sat the Twelve drifted towards him and gathered around him, and despite his fear and consternation Jesse was comforted by their presence. He knew that he did not mind to face death if it came to him in such company, as these women shone and surrounded him with their love and admiration.

Jesse watched as Ruby picked up a smooth stone from beneath the waters of the grotto. She wiped the stone dry with the edge of her shirt, then knelt bowed over with the stone in her hands.

The Twelve began to chant softly and Jesse saw the stone tremble and begin to change. The entire substance of the rock shimmered as it was prayed over before turning suddenly into bread. Without acknowledging his surprise Ruby looked up at Jesse and held the bread out to him while the Twelve intoned in unison.

Take this bread and eat it. This bread of consequence, the bread called Ergo. It will guide you safely through the vale of death, and it will shield your soul until you have passed over. When you have eaten, so shall we eat, in order to guide you hence.

Jesse took the bread and broke it as the Twelve continued to sing.

Take this bread, and eat it.

As we do so in protection of thee.

After Jesse had eaten they invited him to drink. He cupped the water of the grotto with his hands and it was cool and refreshing beyond what he could have expected, and also laced with something sweet and cloying, like altar wine but more soothing and uplifting than that.

When Jesse had eaten and drunk and the Twelve had partaken also he retched and felt his final meal turn abruptly within him. He knew that his time would be short. He turned to Ruby, who could not bring herself to look at him, and with his hands he gently lifted her face towards his.

Ruby, he said.

It’s not your fault.

As she kept her head turned away from him.

It is.

No Ruby.

It is, Jesse. It is my fault.

Jesse gathered her up in his arms but although he felt her tremble for him still she held her face away. Jesse stroked her hair for the final time, but as he tried to reassure her she shook her head and bitterly denied him.

No, Jesse.

Ruby. It’s OK.

No.

You’ll be OK.

No.

Jesse held Ruby without trying to reassure her further, until he felt his last meal roil and shift violently within him. The cool touch of Magdalene came upon him and she said: Jesse, Beloved. There is no more time. He nodded and kissed Ruby but she remained coiled up and turned away from him. Jesse sighed and left her that way as he turned back towards the Twelve for the final time.

***

Ruby did not watch the terrible sequence that unfolded over the next few minutes. She did not see Jesse turn back towards the Twelve and have his head anointed with the waters of the grotto. She did not see him stiffen and lurch slowly sideways, nor did she see him begin to cry out and speak in tongues as he lay rigid and pitiful on the hard rock floor of the grotto.

Ruby kept her eyes closed as Jesse sank further. She did not witness him hunch and slaver and convulse, or when he became like a wild animal, scratching at his face and neck as he howled there in the silence.

As Jesse thrashed and sank the Twelve began to chant, and by that chanting guide Jesse gradually into death. In her innermost heart Ruby began to curse the Twelve for what they were doing, and then she repented from that and cursed herself with a dozen times the ferocity. Ruby knew that all of this was her own fault, even in her ignorance, for showing herself to Jesse when she should have remained concealed. She also knew in bitter retrospect that the memory scrub she had given him was hopelessly inadequate for the strength of a man like Jesse, and although the knowledge of such men had been concealed from her for her entire life still she knew that she was entirely to blame.

The Twelve saw Ruby berate herself and they reached out in an attempt to reprieve and console her, although the anguish within her was not susceptible to consolation.

You could not have known, they said.

You could not have foreseen this man.

And there is still hope, daughter.

The trumpets may yet sound.

Suddenly there was consternation amongst the Twelve. As he sank towards death Jesse began to fight back, in that precise moment when death finally called him onwards. The Twelve were surprised and then dismayed by his strength as they wrestled with his soul. The Twelve called on Jesse to cease but he would not cease, the strength within him defying their own twelve-fold strength. Jesse’s power even overcame the drag exerted by the Ergo as he fought to remain in the world.

Ruby heard Jesse shout out to her as he struggled to avoid his fate. She was so devastated by his cry that she cried back to him, despite her efforts to restrain herself. Without any further thought she rushed to him and held his poor head in her hands, and he slackened in her embrace while saying only a single word to her.

Ruby.

This name that he so loved.

I’m here, she said.

Ruby.

As Ruby held Jesse he relented from his struggle and began instead to weep. His tears fell out of him like so many shattered remains of the strength that had kept him in the world. Ruby held him as he wept and the Twelve were able to fall away from Jesse and restore themselves for the end, to guide him into the final descent that was only moments away.

As Jesse was held and comforted he reached out into the minds of the Twelve via some new route that had been created by his struggle, taking these women greatly by surprise. He showed them the full shape of his heart, the wonders that were stored up in it, and the Twelve saw how near they were to their complete destruction, out of the secret strength that Jesse had accumulated to himself.

Jesse spoke softly to them.

I am sorry, sisters.

My courage failed me.

I am ready to go.

Ruby moved again to dissent from these things but as she did so Jesse was suddenly and entirely with her. He surrounded her with the light she had seen in him previously, that night of the deciding moon, but there is no way to describe the deep abiding that she felt as his soul surrounded her, completely enclosing her soul. Ruby knew that Jesse was willing to go and that she must let him go, for many reasons including the profound bonds of his honour. She saw that his substance as a man would be terribly degraded if he chose to remain alive, with the whole world now imperilled by the life he so wanted to embrace. Jesse showed Ruby some of those possibilities, what he now knew by heart, and the dissent within her died and she knew that he must go.

So it was. Jesse’s body sank back and his soul slowly detached from it, receding across the waters before Ruby could think or argue further or buy him further reprieve.

Jesse’s soul was ferried out across the lake, and it floated into the indeterminate space beyond those waters until it became hazy and obscure. Through the merest fissure between worlds they saw his soul pass by the outer reaches, and then sink past the dragons guarding the descent into the places under the world.

***

In another place entirely Carlos Lasenex felt what it was that had slipped beneath the world. He rushed to retrieve what had fallen but there was no means available for him to do so. He thrust out his hands in vain, feeling Jesse plunge past his power to save him and be utterly lost to the world.

No, cried Carlos.

No, No.

O they have damned him.

His cry resounded in the grotto, shaking the Twelve as they prayed for their Beloved, harrying the air in that place before it was cried out altogether. This cry of desolation for another man condemned, another man gone.

***

The visitors to the grotto felt Carlos’ cry rise and tail off, and although they did not comprehend his words or know of their provenance they were not surprised to hear such anguish for the loss of a man like Jesse.

The Twelve held Ruby, hoping to console her, but she felt banished from the Light that united them and she could not be consoled. They would have held her there forever but the darkness was chased from the sky and their retreat was forced upon them. Each of them reached out to Ruby and caressed her but although their compassion fell on her like rain it did not reprieve her at all. For this terrible disaster she had caused, what she had allowed to happen even by bringing Jesse to this place.

The Twelve said their goodbyes as their forms faded and shimmered upon the waters, their souls gradually retreating to their various parts of the world. Leaving poor Ruby sitting devastated on the hard rock, a slight and motherless child, now bereft of her only love, her form now the form of pity and of cruelty, the sorrow that will not cease in this contingent, corruptible world.

Chapter 19 - To Break The Cursed Ground

RUBY sat next to Jesse for a long time. She sat long enough to feel the day break and her powers wane again. She sat hunched and shaking with grief but she did not weep, even as Jesse grew cold and the rigor came into his sinews. She saw death take the colour out of his skin, so recently warm and responsive to her touch. It had always responded to her absolutely but it would not respond to her now.

Ruby did not weep. She would have died for Jesse immediately and traded places with him in the underworld but that was no longer for her to offer or decide. Instead Ruby sat there with dry eyes rocking herself slowly, praying for Jesse’s safety and his protection even though he was now in a place where such prayers are not admitted, where they remain unheard.

As the night sky leavened and the birds began to sing Ruby felt a tremor come into her that could not be stilled. She shook from the inside out, with the terrible beginnings of a grief that would take her life away and bury it in misery. She stood up and scolded herself but the tremor did not abate, but although she could not stop the chattering that came from her teeth still she did not weep.

Ruby knew she needed to bury Jesse. She knew what They would do to him if they took him, how they would take even the remnants of his blood in an effort to divine his secrets. Ruby had felt his blood course under her, inside of her, and she was not about to let Them take it from him, the blood that had flowed with everything that made Jesse into a man.

Ruby first needed to wash Jesse’s body. She pulled him to the edge of the pool and she bathed him in cupped handfuls of the cool pine-scented water. She bathed his wounds, the cuts and abrasions that his struggle had left him with, but although those wounds flowed again with liquid blood he was not revived. Ruby anointed Jesse’s head with water, and as it ran down over his cheeks and across his lips the dust there was washed away. The water flowed over his eyes and covered his nose and he raised no word of complaint. She drew more water and wet his hair, stroking it back out of his eyes, kissing his forehead and stroking his hair for the final time.

Ruby knew that she must bury Jesse. The Twelve had promised that they could hide him in this place, but only if his body was sealed safely within the ground. Ruby knew that the grave needed to be close enough to the waters to hide him, and yet far enough to maintain those waters from the putrefaction of his corpse.

Ruby lifted Jesse up on to her back, the dead weight of his much larger body. She carried him slowly up the near slope into the pine forest that surrounded them. Jesse weighed on her like bricks or stones but still she made herself put one foot after the other under the terrible, tragic weight he had become. Occasionally a small noise would come from him, a small sigh dislodged by her jolting carry. Each time her heart leapt at the sound, but then realising what it was her heart fell back to earth again.

When Ruby had climbed far enough, up to a small saddle with enough flat ground, she laid Jesse’s body out gently under the pine trees. She stood bent over with her hands on her knees, breathing hard to regain her breath.

Ruby did not stop to admire the sunrise, or to feel the early sun wash over her and warm her to her bones. She marked out a space with her foot, and then she knelt beside Jesse and scratched at the earth with her fingers. She scratched and tore her fingernails and when her fingertips began to bleed she took up a sharp stone and continued to scrape violently at the earth.

Eighteen inches under the soil Ruby found brutal coffee-rock, and although she did not relent from digging she was forced to take short breaks, a breath or two, to get up enough strength to strike at the ground again. As the morning wore on she hungered and suffered terrible thirst but she did not relent from her task. The sun watched her work as it crept to its high place in the sky, and as it began its journey back down to the western horizon again.

Ruby dug on. She worked silently and brutally, like a steeldriver daring his heart to fail, to find release from the labour that she was condemned to. The afternoon heat tormented her, flies stung her but she did not brush them away. The shadows eventually grew long and the heat softened but still Ruby scraped at the ground, as the whole of her body cried out for rest. She would not halt even when the last light was leaving the sky, until she had disturbed enough ground to bury Jesse’s body.

Ruby dug on deeper and deeper as the sun sank out of the sky.

Chapter 20 - The Shortest Verse

AS the last of the light died Ruby stood back and looked at the grave she had prepared for Jesse. She took off his clothes and carefully laid them aside, and then with the last of her strength she pulled him down into the space that she had made.

His eyes were closed but his mouth opened as he was moved, and Ruby took a small round stone and placed it in his mouth, and she took two flatter stones and placed them over his eyes. She crossed his hands over his chest and she packed his clothes down around him, as if to give him some protection from the sharp sides of the grave she had dug out of the compacted gravel.

As Ruby looked at Jesse for the last time a tiny wail began to build in her, and she moaned along its line for her fallen love. For his bright soft eyes that were now dark, for his tongue now stilled on a stone she had placed there.

Ruby moaned as she began to cover Jesse’s body with the ground she had dislodged, and her lines of sorrow grew louder as he disappeared from view, sinking further underground with every handful of stone and earth that she placed on him. She keened as every last grain was heaped up, and she did not pause when she found a large chunk of quartz and pried it loose and rolled it to the top of the mound that she had made for Jesse, the grave that she had consigned him to by her stupidity, her desire.

Then Ruby could not contain herself. Against all of the dictates of her kind, the requirements of the very song that was within her, tears began to well in her eyes, and this last time that was required of her she could not staunch those tears. She was lost and distraught and in the darkness there was no one to witness her sorrow, and there was no moon, for it had gone behind the earth, and there was just the darkness within her and without.

Ruby wept. She could no longer maintain her eyes in their dryness and so tears began to fall from her, slowly at first, splashing softly against the dust that she had stirred up from her hard day’s digging, the dust that now covered her and also the body of her dead love Jesse.

With that, the dams that had been so carefully constructed within Ruby finally collapsed. She wept great soft tears of desolation, and the more tears that she wept the more she found within her, demanding even as it was forbidden to her that she weep for the loss of this man, who had no-one else to mourn him, whom she alone had loved and by the tragedy of that love had consigned to the grave.

And with no one to hear her Ruby turned from weeping to howling, and she then shifted beyond that to sorrow sounds of terrible majesty and devastation. Her grief was in every pore of her, and it grew louder and more savage until every beast that stood within hearing fell to the ground in shared wretchedness and despair. Even humans who could not hear her howling in the night were laid low by her grief, some falling to their knees, as the sorrow that was massed within her soul broke outwards and poured into the world.

At the centre of this grief-storm knelt poor Ruby Tuesday, horror shaking every fragment of her being, every part of her shattered by it and becoming one fluid misery and devastation, amidst her howling reproaches against herself. In her sorrow and her shame she did not pity herself but instead savaged herself with accusations, for having killed precisely the thing that she most loved. This poor man whose only sin was loneliness, this kindly light being whom she should have cherished and protected and yet had consigned to the awful silence of the grave.

She felt Jesse’s soul cry out to her from the place where it now resided and she cried back, cried out to redeem him but he could not be redeemed. Her vast soul then became utter desolation, a waste land bare and devastated, nothing but the shrieks of scavengers and the damned they fed upon, the very image of catastrophe, the beginning and the end of the world.

***

Ruby wept for time beyond telling, and her grief went out of her to places both sacred and profane. She wept to revive Jesse, and she wept to bring him back, and she pledged everything that she had in order to wrestle him from out of the underworld and the clutches of the ones who crouched there.

In the grotesque wreck of her sorrow and her shame Ruby fought and bargained all night. Even as dawn prepared to come back into the world, when she saw portals there between worlds, she made one desperate last effort at bargaining and redemption, and she pledged her soul unreservedly in exchange for Jesse’s soul.

As Ruby saw that this was not permitted she fell though all sorrow and became one with the great keening gulf at the heart of the world, the place where all tears run to be remembered, the vast river of mourning that flows out and then returns to its centre, bearing the inevitable tears of all suffering, sentient beings.

With that, Ruby was finished. She felt herself fade, and her fingers bled again suddenly and profusely. She said one last goodbye to Jesse, in sorrow that she had now lost her strength after her night of grief, that she could do no more than she had done for him by putting him safely under the ground.

Ruby’s strength faltered and she fell back softly on to the dust that was now mingled with her sweat and her blood and her tears. In the shade of those pine trees, as dawn became day, Ruby collapsed into absolute darkness, a dead sleep that she could not hold herself back from. Even as she wished that that she could go on to much darker places, to redeem what had fallen there, she fell back in exhaustion on the dusty ground and she did not fall any further than that.

Chapter 21

A Branch That Shall Bear Fruit

THE light grew and day stole back into the world but Ruby was lost in the darkness, impervious to the seductions of the light. She slept and her soul clung to that forgetfulness. Although her sleep restored some of her strength Ruby would have wished for it to be otherwise, preferring death to any other state, but there were barriers between her and that final destination that could not be overcome, and so she was condemned to come back into the world no matter how long she slept.

When Ruby did return to the world it was by a circuitous route, visiting places for which there exist no adequate words of description. After that journey Ruby’s soul returned to her poor bruised body, the damage of her night of grief still written heavily upon it. She opened her eyes and felt the waves of physical tiredness that still assailed her, and the much greater pain in her heart that she knew would never be assuaged.

After she woke Ruby lay still for some time. She stared mutely across the surface of the earth, her breath kicking up the dust she had disturbed, the grave-dust that was now settled everywhere around her. She felt bitterness rise and accuse her when she looked towards the funeral mound she had built, the raw earth drying slowly in the last light of the sun. Ruby shook as she lay there, and as much as she tried to still those tremors she could not hold her body still.

Ruby lay there and looked for the stone that she had placed on top of the mound but she could not see it. She looked past the now furrowed mound in puzzlement and then in horror as she saw that the stone had been rolled away. She gasped and blinked and looked around and she knew, suddenly, she knew that her grief had sent her mad, like so many grieving women before her, the madness that was predicted in the lines of her own song, brought on her inevitably by the loss of such man as Jesse.

Ruby pulled herself upright. She slapped herself and scolded herself for her stupidity but the mad vision did not abate. She stared at it, and as she stared the vision looked back at her and smiled at her. She groaned to see the beloved smile that she had seen so often, the same smile that she had fought all night to redeem.

The vision continued to smile at her warmly, and despite her misgivings all of the warmth and life that had deserted Ruby as she grieved rushed back into her. Even though she knew she had been driven insane still she clung on desperately to the smile that greeted her, the vision of the beloved face that smiled at her.

As she stared, Ruby began to wonder. She doubted whether even madness could create such a clear vision, or provoke the love that it suddenly moved and revived in her. Ruby doubted mostly whether madness could animate such a vision to speak, or to say the words that came in such an ordinary way towards her, although she could not understand why Jesse would be motivated to say them.

Thank you.

Just that simple expression.

Thank you, Ruby.

Ruby remained still for a long time, looking at him.

Jesse?

Yep.

Jesse. You can’t be here.

I know, Rubes. I know.

Because last night…

I know, Ruby. Believe me.

Even for us, this is really fucking weird.

Ruby got up slowly and pulled herself to standing, thinking that her insanity might be shaken off if she stood up straight enough to dislodge it. She thought that if this was only a dream it might dissipate if she hauled her poor body into a position inconsistent with sleep. But as she stood the vision did not waver or abate, and her lost love sat looking at her, smiling quietly in the last light of the setting sun.

Jesse, she said again.

You can’t be here.

I know, he said.

How did you get… back?

Jesse smiled at her, shrugging his shoulders.

I’ll make you a deal, Ruby.

She nodded, trying to hold back her tears.

You come sit here with me.

You put your arm around me, and hang on to me.

I’ll do my best to tell you what happened.

Ruby could not contain a final huge convulsive sob. She then breathed out hard, wiping the tears out of her eyes before they could fall. She moved over to where Jesse sat and she sat beside him, just as he had asked. Jesse sighed softly when she touched him with her hand, and he sighed louder when her arm slid softly around his back to hold him. Ruby for her part shut her eyes and squeezed Jesse hard, and although he felt dense like flesh and blood should still her grief did not allow her to hope, as she closed her eyes tighter and held on to him as tightly as she could.

Jesse was quiet as she held him but he was not reserved or withdrawn. He was simply quiet, and full of a new spirit that had not been within him before. He did not speak for a long time but he somehow slipped open his heart to Ruby, and she saw with her own sight what was now contained in that place. She would have wept tears of wonder and gladness but Jesse had asked her to hold him, and so she clung on to him tightly without weeping or speaking. Ruby would have kissed Jesse but there was no need to kiss him anymore, as all of the warmth and grace of this man shone out in a strait beam towards her, and he was like a sun or a new flame or the return of all of the goodness in the world.

As Ruby held Jesse he began to speak. He spoke of his death, and he told Ruby that although death might seem terrifying it was actually nothing to fear. It is what comes after, he said. There is a jealous and savage beast, somewhere under this world, and you pay him in kind for every joy you have encountered in our human realm. You pay especially if you have strengthened your soul with kindness, generosity, good deeds.

Jesse continued. I saw other souls flicker there and be snuffed out, souls that were rotten and putrid and cruel, but for me and others like me there is torment beyond description, beyond endurance or even the time to describe. I was suspended in agony that I cannot account for, and I was held there in the certain knowledge that there would always be worse to come. I saw my suffering multiplied for eternity, I cried out for oblivion but it was viciously denied to me.

But Ruby, he said.

I cried out to you.

As my hope faded within me, I called upon your name.

Ruby shuddered.

I heard you, she said.

I know, said Jesse. You heard my pleas. You heard and then like a blinding light, you appeared. My dead eyes could not see you but you were there all around me, as bright and cool as the moon on a summer night. You were there, and you stood for me, and my tormentors were utterly dismayed.

Jesse faltered and he shed tears, but although they shone on his face they were tears of relief and wonder and not of desolation. Ruby wiped his tears and she felt them cool and soothe her, soothe and heal her tattered fingers. She brought her hand towards her eyes in amazement, to see the damage being repaired as she watched. She touched one of his tears to her tongue, gasping at the relief and exultation that swept through her from the merest taste of his tears.

Ruby looked at Jesse.

My God, she said.

What are you?

Hey, Jesse said, smiling.

I was telling you a story.

Jesse continued. You came down, he said. I felt you come, and you loosed my chains, and then I heard such a piercing song of love for me, even in the face of my death, that all of my agony was ended. I was released from my captivity and it was all my captors could do to save themselves, in their terror and flight they forgot entirely about me.

I was lost in the darkness, and I fell down and down, but as I fell I felt your sorrow and your love reaching down to me like a beam of light, or a lanyard. I reached out for it, and I lashed myself to it, and without any further effort of mine I was raised up upon that love that you sent down, and I felt myself burst through the surface of the earth.

And here I am.

He looked down at himself, and then at her.

And what am I?

Ruby shook her head.

I guess I am: Risen.

Jesse looked down again at his body, smiling ruefully.

What is this Light in me?

Ruby did not know how to answer. She knew that this was her love Jesse, sitting naked under a pine tree, but she also knew that he had been transformed and that he now shone with the most extraordinary light. His light was gentle even though it was intense, and although Ruby did not recognise it she knew very clearly it was something new to come into the world.

Can I kiss you? Ruby asked.

Jesse laughed gently and nodded his head.

I hope so, he said.

Why don’t you give it a try.

Ruby kissed him with the softest of her kisses. She tasted his tears again, shuddering at the energy and strength that they imparted to her. Jesse wept further tears as he kissed her back, and as she broke off from kissing him he said softly to her.

I don’t know how to thank you.

I was lost, and now I am found.

Ruby wiped his tears away, and as she did so she felt further life come back into her tired body. She shuddered with those deep uprushes of pleasure and she said: did I save you, just that I might be saved? And she kissed his mouth very deeply, and she drank of the light that was in him, and she saw how purified he was by his travels through hell, and she was pierced by his goodness and bravery in a way that she had never been.

You are a new man, she said.

I know.

I don’t think you do.

No. He smiled gently.

Probably not.

Jesse was quiet for some time, and then he asked.

Do you know what I am?

Ruby nodded.

I know it was foretold.

One was said to be coming but Jesse I did not believe it.

They said I was coming?

I think so.

The One who would be redeemed.

But in my lifetime, she said.

There was no sense to hope for it.

They sat silently with each other for a long time, until Ruby put her head down on his arm and told him: I could sing those lines for you, if you would like. Jesse sighed with deep pleasure and anticipation and he said: please.

So Ruby sang that most sacred part of her song, the prophetic lines that set out in all of their longing the things that had been promised to the People of the Covenant. The One who would be redeemed by the love of Lupa, rather than damned by it. Raising His banner, a true Son-God of the earth. Gathering up the exiles of Judah, leading them back into the Promised Land.

The lines of this song fell upon Jesse like the waters of freedom and reconciliation, even as he puzzled to hear of the light that burned within him, how it would light up the world. As the song touched on that light Jesse remembered a question that he had.

Ruby. Would you tell me what this is?

And before she could answer him Jesse extended the palm of his right hand, outwards and upwards. He knit his brow and suddenly there flashed an intense light exploding from the palm of his hand. Ruby gasped as she looked, for although the light shone soft and beautiful it was also tremendously fierce and acute. The light flashed and exploded into a beam of bright sparkling blue light, and Jesse waved it and wielded it, and as its light infused him Ruby saw that the light within him was not separable from the blue light that he now wielded. Ruby grasped for her words and Jesse saw them form in her, and they both said the same words at the same time.

A sword.

A shield.

And more than these.

From these events were derived many further events, further things which may be told in the further chronicles of Lupa. Things that for the wise come already announced, through their meditation upon chapter and verse, and also legends inscribed in prose and poems and even baser forms than these. Reading past events as prophecy, and descriptions of future things as events already come to pass. The raising of the dead, incorruptible. A change going to come, like a flood on the barren fields of the earth. The chosen people, their gathering up, their entry to the gates of paradise. And it is for the wise, who know how to read such things, that the final words of this volume shall be given.

Rejoice, Daughters of Jerusalem. Rejoice! For he that was dead is now Risen. Rejoice, O Nation of Judah! For his name is Emmanuel – Light With Us, The Shining One. Rejoice, O Israel!

Here ends the First Chronicle of Lupa.

ABOMINATION 1:1-5

THERE are forces in the world that instinctively seek their own advantage, and counted amongst these are the righteous forces of the world. They battle their adversaries fiercely and they use such weapons as are available to them, with trickery and deception being heavily numbered amongst them. That the result might eventually prove indecisive shall not deter them from their struggle, for only through their constant combat is the balance of the world maintained.

So too are there bargains struck between these forces, in those rare moments of armistice between them. Bargains struck in hope and ignorance, without any reckoning of their true or approximate worth.

So did one such bargain restrain The Abomination until the time that a man should escape from his manifold suffering in Hell. So at the very moment that the root of Jesse was loosed from its perdition, there arose the exact condition for the release of this monster into the heart of the world.

So was the Abomination unleashed. This foulness that had neither integrity nor structure, yet revelled in engorged composition beyond any capacity to measure. This contaminate tumultuous thing, roiling in foul and turbid atrocity. It was clotted star-grime and other corrupted matter; grim colourless degradation coalesced; and far more despicable in form and substance than any of these things.

And it surged forth to make prophets from dead poets, who foresaw its dire waves seething and drowning the ceremony of innocence after many centuries of stony sleep. And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

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