Vanishing Wave, parts seven and eight

Part 7: Prince Nicola
Lafey?
Lafey Jerasun?
Wanda…

Closer…
Weird mystery…
Feel you…
Searching for us


Now I know you are safe;
The last act I completed…

You were here made known:
Where is the here I find you?
And where from…do I find you?

I become part of the knowledge that is the place in space and time where
I’ve sighted my friends.

Reaching out into this world, perturbed invisible waters carry pathways which many walk in my direction, and no doubt beyond me, into infinity.

Some walk these pathways; others walk back to the homeworld that circles the sun;
Some transgress the cosmos, finding new forms,
And I bear witness.

How many lifetimes hence did this future world lie;
And something of my own lifetime ties to this transformation across everything.

You, I see, descend from the children of our magicks, the night before Ray, Abril and I fell with the Box to its final resting place.

Yet what now is final?

Even here, I see the Box resides in your mind, and from your imagination was it taken by some force back out to menace the world.

“Abril!” I screamed; the frozen world around us splintered.
I remember only the energies Abril used to pull that pillar of flame ---as though from nowhere!---towards us, as we tumbled from the broken ice cap.
Now I am where I started, inspired to search: where now are we,
Ray, Abril and Nicola, found?

Where are you, my lifelong partners? How might we champion those caught in the awesome fear of this invading passage of time? Mothers, afraid to be torn from their infants during birth; Lovers, carelessly leaving one another, only to return, words unsaid, to an empty room? Children, loved ones vanishing into thin air? What sort of bond arises, to stitch together the shattering remnants of certainty in utter turmoil?

While yet I see, there must be a way to stand against these fears! The chance to know what one may fear and yet live is, ever, all I asked!

(pg. 26)
What is it now to live, after the Breakthrough?

I find myself here now, still clueless of where I did quit ‘then’!

The sky answers forth before me; a second land sits upside down in the sky, a storming opening nearly wide as the horizon to the sea, into another time and place, that I know contains the truth.

All is unveiled as energy crackles from mighty fingers which fill me with awe and dread beyond all measure: fate is opened to two converging times as the hands crawl before the face of some massive idol, an unhuman of human-like shape yet without legs, melded from the metals of the earth, presiding from the mountain top as its gaze magnetizes upon its own flexing fingers that open Forever with a view down and into the world I knew, placed above us:

Before I assumed the flowing, accumulating knowledge of this time from shared human consciousness, we of the Dragon’s Line--- Abril, and brother Ray Awen, occasionally his old friend Nido and our stripling colleague Lafey Jerasun formed a core that continued my father the king’s mission to preserve items that conveyed the culture of our time for study in future generations. In our trades, travels, and troubles, we often dreamed how a world might exist where discoveries are preserved and languages written and read.

The mysterious benefactor that brought Abril the hawk Gaywen came to us shortly after the priestess of Inguz, Wanda, had joined our travels. “Rid the human race of this box,” he said, “whose contents had caused untold sickness.” Then as ever was it used and fought for as a weapon by regional bands of reavers, whose lore of tales of evil and foolishness lent it a mystical status; the need to dispose of it quickly, then, dictated a dicey ice cross.

We agreed to bury it in a mountain pass we’d reach by the next full moon. We fought off bloodthirsty pursuers and ambushes along the way. How it is we came to be stalked by some witch, I know not: never could we agree upon where she is seen, we who had used the superstitions of other parties to our own effect in times past.
(pg.27)
Ray struggled ---as we all did---with the influences of the box; I am sorry, after long years, the events of last night divided our communication. The very next day the sunshine weaken’d our perch, and we who so long together stood, fell apart…

I see a man of these times---though like none other I did see---stretching his body in a serpentine manner, climbing the mountain surface quickly, wary as he nears the machine built to call upon these transforming waves.

From his belt, the strange-garbed man draws a device, which he continues to modify throughout his surreptitious movements.

I am moved by his intent to understand. I know not by what hand in that world I do so, but as my will reaches into the flow of particles that solidify to become parts in the machine of transformation, I send clouds that congeal into tiny pieces as he works, first without his noticing! Yes, now he knows, something intervenes beyond his powers, but glances are futile; time is of the essence.

He quickly dons the partial helm he has fashioned, and begins to see those that walk past me into the cosmos.

Now the world left by that wave
Changes, as though time is sped
And some remain, while some fade, and the earth erupts quickly into new shapes, melded by inherent forces that naturally occur over time, that tug fiercely at the future for its essence.

(p 28) People remaining develop new powers; they suddenly feel one another in new ways,
Sense one another’s emotions, untie themselves from the fear of doom. Is this meant to be the solution to humankind’s progress? Was ere it hidden in our purpose?

Suddenly, now, the flowing man, digesting his new perspective, realizes he stands at the feet of three large ebon warriors, like armor blacker than midnight come to life, the puppets of the Box…

Oh, no…I see now it is we, the ever standing core of the Dragon’s Line, who stand incarnated in mockery by the Box---over-human darkened selves, machines of our disconnected selves infused with fantastic might. The daggers of our desperately hurled past intentions stab this future time!

He pulls out a type of torch, only the flame sails as if by magic into the sky above, exploding into an Arabic numeral, 4.

I see the Box taken from the mind of our descendent clutched by the Darcane, who converges now to this place where they serve the manipulations of time and space.
Never did my wildest dreams reveal their true light!

I stand close beside the world in which I have no other physical presence save the giant slave of the Box that ripped open the elements of land and sea, a cornucopia flowing still into the hands of the Hell Ray who continues his insidious industry.

“Join us,” it says, gesturing almost humanly with an expansive sweep of the arm. “Embrace the only hope!”

“Not the only one,” he replies, standing fast as they approach.

I feel a touch at my hip…and a little child, through whom I can partially see, asks me if I want to help his daddy.

“Vanishing Wave, part eight: Abril”
p29
I watch.


The ground disappears before the feet of the darkenselves find it;
From the front of some fantastic car, a gargoyle of living stone cryptically shouts to them:
“Cancel one bye-bye wave! I gotcha anudder one right here---it’s CLOBBERIN’ TIME!” The creature slams into the middle one with tremendous force, even as I sense some other conflict hindering its movements from the inside.

While I am certain the woman made the ground invisible, the flaming man who flies arrests me by his dazzling light. He glides into the face of the massive figure whose fingers seem to cull another world, inserted perversely through the skies, and declares, “I should be welding a Southern Cali chassis, instead of blasting you, Time Robot!” Some of the meanings, the emotions at least, unveil as I listen, but I am drawn to the smallest figure, the first to recover footing from the invisible ground. That figure embodies ME: lithely, nimbly skipping as the body of their leader stretches like animal hide, poking away at each point where my darkenself would obtain leverage. That self attempts to fire a darkened arrow while evading him, but the flaming youth shouts a warning, and the woman conjures protection none can see. Fascinating!

Behind them, the gargoyle, who I now see is some fantastic sort of man, crushes the other two figures together, still clamoring war cries: “This is whot happens when ya sucker punch a guy from Yancy Street!” At his feet tumbles now the Box, its dire purpose near to fruition.

I watch the woman make the Box visible on their plane, as my darkenself kicks the flowing man in the face. She cannot quite grasp it, essentially, but she knows that if she does not shield its effects from the world, the vanishing waves will continue. They roll back beyond me, as I seem to bathe in their cascades.

I must remember how to find Nicola and Ray! First I must remove the threat of this Darcane, whose skills will hinder the woman’s efforts to capture the Box. Will power alone requires exercises; I strike upon the idea of manifesting within the Darcane through the higher dimensional inspiration of music, to dance, and so take over its body with human rhythms, defying the enslavement of the Box!

But my plan must move quickly; even now her contact with the Box lacks precision, and so it draws from within her her own Darkenself, who begins to shimmer forth to the surface!

The flaming one has ceased trying to destroy the time totem, and in desperation has shot his energies through the rift into the time where originally I live! I watch the initial rays of heat strike the frosty ground there atop the ancient mountain, near the same position where we brought the Box for keeping within the molten core. This time, I see again the vanishing witch who seemed to pursue the Box; now I know she is just an echo of sorts, not the assassin we imagined. Our precious footholds
splinter into an avalanche cave-in atop the imploded volcanic neck!

“Abril!”

Now, I see, from another perspective, how Nicola and I did survive in some other form; with déjà vu I see the pillar of flame appearing, charged with its amazing temporal energies from the future, and with magic do I command it to become the housing body for our unified spirits!
All hurts are fears thrown into the fire,
Once held, to become knowing, destruction, and understanding.

Now can I take the control of this Darken form! Fill with my rhythms, my heart, return to me my skill and knowledge harnessed by the Box! And here, I discover myself rising,
effected by the touch of a small hand. Where I exist, in worlds with walls as permeable as in dreams, I gaze into Nicola’s face, as vanishing waves sow their speedy transformation centered in the city hidden in the world below.

When the course of events spreads its own vanishing waves across the face of human kind, what shall pass into the unseen, and what remains to be known?

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