The Halls of Mandos, then. So this is me. Let’s knock this on down, brother, for the health of the world.
Saul paced the long, marble corridors.
Was he waiting for someone?
Big Xian?
A Golden knight on a nearby pillar sprang into life.
…
Can good knights rust?
The enchanted canaries rattle in their pages?
…
Cages?
The wanderer wandered on.
It all just seemed so goddamn, frickin’ meaningless.
The plaintive howl of Big Xian breezed, e’en gusted on.
Saul heard him, but he didn’t hear him.
God’s will is Semitic.
The Mandate, the Degree of Heaven, is of the Sage of Ten Thousand Ages.
Saul, O forlorn beloved one, you dared to sift through customary normality and the more clay-like forms of self-interest.
You fermented, you distilled some kind of higher standpoint that is not reducible to ‘business-as-usual.’
And yet, you overthrew the grandiose ‘Adam of Clay,’ in favor of mere husky, dusky ‘spirit’ on his own.
True?
Factual?
Meaningful?
Many are the tangles, in the web of Indra!
And yet, in the night of hubris, all leaps are downhill-bound alike.
Forget me, brother, forget me not, what is that to me?
Righteousness is sufficient unto we.
‘Did he miss out the fuckin’ capital,’ Saul grunted?
His steps finally down-trod to one final, dizzied halt.
Saul bowed his head, but the eyes of his spirit were turned above.
He saw the two golden angels shimmering and glittering as gold.
Between them, menaced by the stork of Zechariah in the distance (who could say it wasn’t a hawk?) the carried between them a golden censer.
It was a censer, but it was more in the form of a weighing scale.
Between the two destinies of this device of marvellous Babylonian contrivance, a shining sword was perched.
Saul had seen it often in his dreams.
Bowing his head in fearful submission, the great, long, slender sword descended from the skies.
He felt it cleave his skull.
There was no pain; just a long, cool, slow, solid splitting of clinical precision.
On this side?
Exactly one half.
Not a single atom more or less.
On the other?
Not a single atom more or less.
He remembered that this was the same dream he had had after that terrible, glorious campfire night in Yunnan province.
“You’re talking in your sleep,” Saul whispered.
All of a certain he jerked up, wide eyed, staring up in horror.
There was nothing there!
The marbled ceiling, with all its beautiful frescoes, had opened up to an abyss; but they had lied to him! The abyss wasn’t down; it was up!
Saul let out a deafening roar, and the entire Jade Palace of the Sublime Judgment trembled, despite how it had seemed immovable and solid as the hills.