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Season Of Being
A Novella
By Stephen John Jeffries

Contents: Part I The Prose Of A Future Past, and the Memorandum Of The Broken Man.
Part II: The Bare Embers Of Dawn
Part III: The Terrorist Messiah
Part IV: The Blood Of The Lamb

Part I: The Prose Of A Future Past, and the Memorandum Of The Broken Man.

The soothsayers had sung their psalms of doom from ages afore the centurions; and the poets and shamans had etched their austere carols of prophesy with sonnets of renewal. Yet in the end, we found no gods from whence the deluge of wrath came to drown our musings: and perhaps that was our downfall. For though we pushed the mother to her limits, it was the legacy of the warlike whom shattered the present, entombed the past, and tainted the fountains of the future.

Yet, beneath the barren sky blanketed black by it’s funeral shroud of ash, deep within the poisoned scorched earth betwixt the failing roots of trees that new more moons than any man, hope was still wheezing within a wine cellar: amidst the eternal struggle of illumination and absence. There sat a man, frail, gnarled, and thin, in a plush stuffed brown leather chair torn in spots from ware. He was broken: blond hair graying thin, falling out; teeth loosening, gums bleeding; blue eyes growing milky, features withering gaunt and blistered; soiled rags hanging like loose skin old bones; breathing shallow.

The broken man was in his sanctuary of light, the chrysene and fragrant glow of an oil lamp. It was partitioned from the darkness by a cubicle of bookshelves, filled with everything from authors with sir names such as Alighieri, to tiles with words like Zarathustra. The sweet sent of the lamp’s fuel flowing from his pressboard crowned desk gave it the feel of a holy tabernacle, as it’s soft brilliance ascended to dance with the darkness in a flicker tango of shadow play on the concrete ceiling. Perhaps this ruined wraith could still find the gods that never manifested; could they yet hold salvation and not wrath?

However, their still was the matter of absence, for the darkness always breathed beyond the reach of illumination’s sword. The palpable inky veil pressed with malice against his cube of thoughts with malice, frigid, ethereal, and fluid, it hissed as it wrestled with the edges of the light, like white hot iron brought to ice water. It whispered in a wordless hiss to the broken man’s subconscious, “forget, sleep now for eternity, and I shall eat your pain, and devour your memories. After all, there can be no more torment without thought my friend.”

The broken man wanted to give in. He was like a flower that had bloomed ready to bear fruit and seed, yet had been severely wilted by some unforeseen spring chill that would never lapse. This Spring had perished, and the summer was never born; Winter had sprung from the ashes of fall like a phoenix carved from ice that radiated thermal nuclear hyperthermia. Decay would be easier for him without the pain. His breathing grew shallower, and his sunken eyes began to close like blossoms in the dark.

He was daydreaming of a youthful dance. He was very young, for it was long afore the recent trials of the great volcanic cataclysm in the Mediterranean, The Third Civil war, and the countless meltdowns of the nuclear power plants all across The Populist Common Wealth of the Americas. Nay, it had to be right before the atomic bomb bloomed like a mushroom out of the Capitol Building, the Amendment of Marshal Rule, and the beginning of the Great Economic Revolution. Yes, It had to come before the start of the Second Civil War, and The Third World War. It even must have been afore the formation of the Common Wealth it’s self between the North American Free Trade Zone, Central and South America, and the island countries nearby the continent. For his mother and father where there, on green mound of perfectly hewn grass, and snow white wild flowers growing out of clean earth, and the sun shone clearly. He was taking a catch with his father while his mother watched.
His father had been beheaded publicly on a guillotine, during The Great Economic Revolution, and his Mother disappeared after the Second Civil War, like a cloud of mist as many political dissidents did; summarily baseball had been outlawed as many things that where considered uniquely American with the formation of The “Incorruptible” Common Wealth as it was often called.

Yet, he was a happy little sap in his daydream of a different time, before the counting and significance of days was outlawed; He was happy, until he looked to his left. Frozen in horror, he saw his wife and his daughter in rags, hair falling out and wracked with blisters and legions from the radioactive plague. He looked back and his fathers head fell off, as he heard the crashing of the blade to wood with a trailing thud: his mothers form faded to nothing. The grass yellowed, and the wild flowers wilted. He awoke with a gasp eyes bulging open like saucers, yet not to close, as his breath ceased to draw and his face collapsed to the top of his desk.

The palpable darkness sought to draw in about him and the light, as if to suffocate it’s antithesis, but it was flailed against the lights vigilance. Still, the sable legion fought on. The flame in the lamp seemed as if it may fail against the black legions, dimming; yet suddenly it plumed forth like a fountain of divine light, and burnt the darkness away in a hiss. The broken man drew breath again, gargling first in a great draught with a shudder as if the light of his hermitage invigorated him with latent static awareness and life. He felt as if he was both within himself and without. He could feel his essence apart from him floating in the spiraling light: defused from his form, and one with it’s waves of particles. Suddenly they spoke to him in their own clandestine language, like secret golden angels unfurling the truth unshod to him within a great gushing deluge of epiphany that was a singular radiant entity: soul; thought; mass; absence; and timelessness. He returned to his ruin and remembered his purpose.

He withdrew from his olive shirt pocket a crumpled pack of Marlboro Reds, and drew forth it’s last cigarette. Producing a purple and gold Zippo from tan pants deep cargo pocket, he lit the smoke with a single strike, and took a deep draft. The broken man grab the tarnished bronze flask on his desk, drained it of it’s last draught of single malt whiskey, then leaned back in his chair. He pulled at the stuffing protruding from the laceration in the leather as he watched the smoke spiral cascading with the light to dissipate. “Ephemeral”, he declared in a feeble dry voice.

He gazed blankly at the center of the book shelf facing him. There rested The King James Bible, The Roman Catholic Bible, The Greek Orthodox Bible, The Hebrew Old Testament, The Koran, A compilation of Gnostic Gospels, and several books on various Eastern and dead religions. “They’re all dead now, aren’t they Nietzsche”, he proclaimed in question? Reaching, he opened the top drawer in his desk, and produced an unused black leather bound journal, harboring gold words which Declared, “Memorandum”. He opened to the first page, it was that heavy enduring kind of leaflet you found in old books. Had had acquired this when he was whole, and had been saving it for something profound. Yet there was not much time left to him he knew, and he would give what he had left: profound, profane, or simple.

He pulled his precious fountain pen out of the same drawer. Within a few labored breaths, his ink was staining the page:

“I just had a dream. I wonder, have I found God know here in the black silence, where the engines of man have failed, and the cycles of our mother earth are dying? I have to wonder if I will be the last, the omega? My wife died a bout two weeks ago, and our daughter is certainly sicker then I, and it’s been at least a month since I had to shoot someone coming to take our food and refuge. When I think of God now, I think of a quote of Jesus from the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas. I have it here in my collection, this place where I used to drink wine and write essays for the University, yet I have no desire to capture it’s exact words, for it’s the sentiment that matters anyway. So let me paraphrase Jesus: “If you look for my father in the sky, then the birds will proceed thee. If you search for my father in the see, then the Fish shall proceed thee, and if you look for my father in the earth, then the worms shall come before thee. Rather, look for my father inside thee, and you will find his kingdom”.

I know I am off a bit, but I don’t care. I do not have time for semantics, and I was fortunate enough to be considered of the intellectual elite of the Common Wealth, and allowed to read such stuff anyway. Of course so we where supposed help dismiss it as hogwash, yet they never completely won my mind to that part with their reeducation. Perhaps it’s because they could not make me forget my mother and father due to my partial immunity to their, ‘Inoculations’. The important thing is it’s more profound to note that there are no more birds in the sky, probably no more fish in the sea, and worms, well, I just don’t know. I suppose that doesn’t matter either, and does it really matter if there is anyone left to look for God? The cherub in my dream, Fredric, he certainly thought so.

I have never been a monotheist in the commonsense of the word. I believe in the possibility of all religions in some form, that they hold some piece of truth. Certainly, quantum physics suggests that something does not manifest as real until it is observed, so haven’t all these beings manifested, as a matter of perspective? Not in form but in observance, yet that was not enough to deliver us.

For man pushed the earth to it’s limits in consumption, but it was not by the hand of God or the retribution of nature that we find our demise. It was in our lust to dominate and compete, to control that which we did not create, but created from. Yet, God in his many forms we perceived did not deliver us. It’s impossible for me to know if the whole world was destroyed, yet certainly from this series of disasters, the only kingdom the population at large found within themselves was hell, and they certainly manifested it on earth. If I am not the omega, I pity those who will struggle on.

For I have always believed that singular life was a phase in an evolving cycle, and that loss and pain perfected us so that we might understand true enlightenment one day. I believed that would lead us to spiritual immortality, and that our works and fruits of the flesh would lead us to physical immortality in memory or observance of a particular phase. I believed this despite the tyrannical, psychological, and chemical thought control of the Common Wealth. I believed the underground Confederacy of the United States must have had some free thinkers behind their brutal actions that where trying to liberate minds. After all, they swore they stood for the abolishment of government and the sovereignty of the individual. Yet obviously they must have been as close to the bullheaded theocrat corporate terrorists that the Common Wealth made them out to be. Thus, which was the lesser of two evils?

Yet, still I believe the potential of man. I remember the troubles of my childhood before the dictators offered order, but they pale compared to this finality. The metaphysical and physical cycles, our works, and our children, they all seem lost now. If someone else is to survive, how are they to find renewal in this, how are they to achieve the alpha?

Which brings me back to my dream, was it fantasy, or prophesy? Was I given some sort of message from the universe for those who might carry on, or is it simply delusion that I might leave some sort of physical legacy. In receiving it, and binding it to word, I am find my own spiritual peace amidst the ruin of everything I ever new. So, I suppose that is all that matters. I believe if anyone is to set things going, it will be from the remnants of those who are organized, and that is not good. The old ways must die with the old world. If this is indeed found, as I was told it will be, let it do something more then leave me a legacy, let it truly make people think.

So, I guess I should get to it. In my dream, I was standing on a smooth crag, with a sheer drop to the sea before me. The sun was a perfect saffron orb, and I could feel it giving life to the earth. The clouds were sparse and cotton clean white, and shaped like the faces of my ancestors I saw pictures of when I was a child, but couldn’t put names to now.

The sky was a perfect baby blue, and the sea glistened like cut sapphires, waves cresting and breaking like white wet diamonds shattering as they rained back down to there liquid garden. There where trees of every kind, palms, elms, oaks, red woods. They where old and tall, and radiated wisdom from their scars of past storms. The grass was emerald green, soft island grass that caressed my feet. Orchids where all about in the shade, and the air was flavored with their fragrance, mingling with the cologne of the sea.

I was naked, and somehow a child again; yet I felt a greater sense of enlightenment then I have now. My skin was bronze from the sun, and my blond hair was curling and thick. My eyes blazed like blue flames. Suddenly, I realized I was looking at myself from somewhere else, but I was still in the body I espied. It was hard to explain, this duality. I held in my hand a smooth radiant marble. Somehow I know it contained the essence of my daughter. I remember think it strange: the duality, the heightened knowledge coupled with my youth, the presence of my daughter before I was of age to sire her, the perfection of the land. I knew I had to be dreaming, but it was to real, the colors, the scents, the feelings. It was something I could not explain, I imagined at that point that it must have been like the visions harbored by prophets.

Then I could smell my pleasing oil lamp, and hear the whisper of the darkness, nay feel it’s cold; yet not in my physical self, in my dual self that looked on ‘Omni’ potently. This is when I came to realize, that I was either insane; or indeed, I was more then a singular entity: a being in existence on multiple levels of consciousness and reality, that are connect in material and thought, and intertwined as one between differing dimensions.

I could see now the litter realization of Thoreau, I could see the hand and “face of God” in the utter purity of nature. Could this be Eden, as the world could have been, or should have been? I grew angry, fervently angry in my distant self, my blood boiled like a viper‘s venom in a shamans potion. Man had the keys to heaven in his hands, like the emerging conscious of an evolving god on a disparate level of a billions of degrees; yet indeed we had unlocked the gates of hell, and extinguished this possibility.

Oddly, my ’pure self’, in this clean vision of heaven on earth, remained calm and at peace, like a saint revised to his fate of martyr doom for some god; pleased to blossom into the meaning of a greater purpose. I realized through it’s astral conduit of senses, that the scents of the land became stale, and the air grew cold in this paradise. Suddenly, the living darkness of my worldly hell emerged on all horizons: devouring the earth in its shapeless maw, drinking the sea into it’s unquenchable abyss. The sun began to flicker, and all colors of the spectrum began to fade, the trees, grass, and flowers began to wilt and die. I screamed from the deepest throes of despair for my other self, calling out for the deliverance of it’s wisdom and innocents.

I could register that I heard myself, in this other form, yet all I could feel was peace and enlightenment, graduation from the sorrow of the loss incurring around him. All began to fall to the raven malice, as the suns rays collapsed to a cone spotlighting cone upon the last grains of earth, where my duality resided. It closed closer, as my childish soul raised it hands towards the crumbling firmament.

He, or rather I began to ascend lifted up in the final failing solar illumination. I could feel myself join again with him, we where two as one. I could feel the cold palpable absence bighting me and scaring me as we ascended, as I howled in mortal terror for my very existence; yet I could also feel the oblivious and love and confidence of my dual half within me. I realized the last light was now shining out of a hole in the darkness we were speeding towards like a rocket. Just before it closed, an ethereal hand closed around us and pulled us through to salvation.

I found myself in a misty place, with soupy air that weighed on my extremities like water, but without the feeling of a material restraint; yet the mist was thin, and I could see there was no ground nor horizons. I was sitting cross legged, as if suspended by some invisible force. The sight was the same as above and bellow It, nothing but misty distance that stretched for eternity. It was neither cold or hot, I was just there, with out any sense but sight and hearing, for there was no smell, and I couldn‘t seem to feel anything. I spoke aloud, “hello”, and my voice seemed to echo on for minutes, or was it a just a mere second? I had nothing to measure by, but I had this strange feeling that time had ceased to pass.

“Hello”, my voice echoed back, yet cherubically. Suddenly, a young boy appeared before me, he bore great resemblance to the image of my own enlightened regression whom was my salvation from the apocalypse of my previous vision; yet he was pale skinned, with dark eyes and dark hair. “who are you”, I proclaimed? “I am Fredrick Stephan Stedinger”, he answered.

“Stedinger, that sounds familiar”, I said. “Of course it does”, he answered, “because your grandmothers maiden name on the German side is Steding, and it was Von Steding, and before that, Stedinger. It changes twice because of religious and political persecution. Their was even a whole persecution against our bloodline singularly, and latter, against the Von Steding’s for their involvement with the Knights Templar; yet little of that matters anymore. Or, actually it could mean a great deal. It depends on how you look at things. To be more precise actually, I am you, or you are my reincarnated several times.” Obviously, I looked at him dumbfounded.

“Alright, I will explain, because you have a hard choice ahead of you, and time doesn’t matter here in purgatory, so we have millennia to talk before we make a decision. You see, everything is connected, everything is, in the only words it can be conceptualized in, The dead God growing and evolving anew. Creation was the death of the old God, and the evolution of the new God into something greater, there is a lot more to it, yet you are not ready for that. What is important to understand, is that everything has a soul so to speak, to different degrees, and for different purposes, on a level we cannot see. As that soul is tempered by sorrow and glimpse of divine perception, so that it might understand define perfection as it grows on a singular basis, part of the soul returns to the source to feed the growth of ‘God’, and part of it is reincarnated.”

“some of us”, he continued, “have stronger souls, and are used for certain purposes, yet we are no more important than any other soul, human, or say, that of a rock. Our blood is of the generation of Seth, we have gifts that others do not, and are often used for certain things that others cannot be, in both life and death.”

“So the story of The Bible, of creation, it is true then?” I rebutted. “No and yes,” he answered, “ Some of it was true on an imperfect human regional scale in it’s original form; yet more if it is true in al versions of all holy books, in a coded fashion we cannot out right see, but only feel as a part of God.”

“Adam and Eve, as you call them, where not the first people. They where the first people to have the ability to converse with God in a truer sense of the word, thus making them a threat to the many demigods created in the splinter death and rebirth of God who sought to take it’s place, yet merely did it’s bidding unconsciously. You see, the apple, or rather fig, of knowledge was truly a liberation of man. These so called first where the true Amon, or people of God. We are descendents of them, with a much purer bloodline then most, and thus have been persecuted through out time for trying to create heaven, if you will, or paradise on earth, and thus have been persecuted by those seeking to see their own will have dominion over what they have been given, rather then continue the creation from it for all, which is it’s purpose.”

“But the world is destroyed, everything is lost, certainly they have won”, I question. “No, “ he answered, there is renewal in all things. Their will is not there own, and that is what they will never understand, it is a fragment of the will of the universe, and without freedom from ego, they will never believe they are doing the will of God. Only man has free will, for he is the seed of the new Gods emerging conscious, the next phase, that is the purpose of his conscious, feeling, and need for perfection through the understanding of both sorrow and Joy.”

“So you are telling me, that all this loss, all this persecution, all this atrocity, and the death of billions of people are the will of a universal plan for the benefit of God? This is out unacceptable, profane, this sounds more like the workings of some fiendish devil evil beyond comprehension” I screamed in outrage.

“Indeed,” he continued “often times the works of God are mistaken for those of evil,. Yet how can the mother understand the beauty of life with out the burden of gestation and pain of child birth; how can how can the farmer enjoy the fruits of his labor without the tilling of the field, and the threat of famine and drought without vigilance and planning; how can the soul appreciate perfection and bliss if it does not understand pain; and how can it see from trillions of points of perspective when it is singularly united in one state of mind that understands itself. Their must be a broader canvas for the painting to grow, their must be more experience for aesthetics to evolve.”

“it is hard to bear, I know, coming from a world of near plenty, to see it all washed away, but what where you really creating? A machine. Mans complete down fall came with industrialization, and utterly with the information revolution that followed. Many wonders they produced, in fact, they had the keys to bring about the paradise that is intended; yet they loss connection and reverence for the earth which begat them. They sought dominance and control over it, instead of continuing it’s perfection. It started even before this, the persecution of the Pagans who worshiped the life giving aspects of nature, Shamans, or “witches” such as I where demonized: because they where a threat to the civilizations emerging that sought conglomeration:, that sought possession over brotherhood: they created slaves instead of craftsmen and artists. They placed idols in the place of the truth, and thus the true ‘God’ was no longer with them, for they buried him in there hearts seeking to kill him, and thus themselves. You see mans free will was used to stifle the evolution of ’God’, thus man has committed this atrocity, as well as ’God’, for man is the flower of ’God’. I suppose I should really tell you, since we have dallied this long, what really happened to cleanse the rumors the old press put in your head?”

“Yes, I said eagerly. “I would really like to hear that, if this is all true of course”, I looked around nervously. “It is true if you observe it to be”, he said. “The Ancient Buddhists, there saints gifted with the Blood of Seth as well, realized this. As did your quantum physics theorized, and came near to proving before hell on earth was brought to bloom.”

“Ancient Buddhists where connected to the bible”, I replied? “Certainly,” he said “and more definitively depending on which version, and how original the translation is. But where should I start?”

“How about you start with why we are here and involved in the crux of all this”, I questioned? “Ah, because I choose to be,” he answered, “and you will have a choice to be. Let me explain why our blood ties us to this: over a thousand years ago our family was of now what you would consider Dutch descent. Despite the Roman influence, and the Christian influence, we largely remained in secret true to our Druidic and Shamanistic ways. However, we where not foolish, and we learned much from the transfers of knowledge from far off lands: spiritual, historical, and scientific. We knew in our hearts what we pure, thus we knew what was pure to take from it, and it strengthened us as a people.

Then, something incredibly strange happened, a man of great power came to us, the Gnostic they called him. He claimed to be a Merovingian refugee, his ancestor being the son of a Greek Disciple of the Christ, named Stephen the Deacon, and the daughter of another Disciple, Mary Magdalene, and John the Baptist. He claimed that John was equally important as the Christ, and the vessel of the Holy Spirit on Earth, as Christ was the vessel; yet in truth these entities where spiritual dualities of them connected from beyond. His name was Etienne 'äv-Baptiste Meroving.


He also claimed to belong to the disposed Merovingian Monarchy of Gaul, in France if you would have it. He claimed that both his blood ties the daughter of Marry and John, and the son of Stephen, in turn married. They begat a child Moïse-deux 'äv-Conaissance Le-Vulnéraire in the language of their new home, Which translates loosely translates to Moses the second, of spiritual mysteries and healing wounds. As he came of age, he had great power of the hand of mind: reading and speaking to the minds of others; healing by touch, moving, shattering, combusting, and repairing objects with his mind; exorcising demons; and swaying the feelings of others with his voice. He was a great artist, poet, musician, and mason, and had mastery of the Coptic arts of mysticism as well, and able to cast spells of great power.

Yet supposedly people didn’t fear him, for his ancestors brought with them the true teachings of Christ, and secrets of technology and mysticism that went back to the beginning of Ancient Egypt. He became a shaman of great repute amongst the people, and traveled about them bringing light, and freeing the land of shadow. Eventually, he became the preeminent advisor to the Merovingian King. He married one of his daughters, and thus his bloodline, and some of his powers passed on eventually to Etienne.

Etienne inherited much of his forefathers ancient scripts and tablets from the old world, the truth about the origin of things, lost arcane knowledge, and the keys to prophesies about the future. He never seemed to age much, and our clan elder perceived him his abilities as both a greater druid and magician at the same time, then anyone he had met of a singularity in either profession. He was also a greater architect, engineer, and musician then we knew at the time, and spoke and wrote many languages that where both living and dead, as well as some we had never heard of. He claimed to have traveled to lands none yet new existed, and spoke of strange alien cultures to our ears.

He proclaimed that he came to us for the bloodline of the Amon was strong within us, and asked to join our family. He explained what it was, and the true alternative to the many creation stories of man. His words seemed fair in the hearts of those with the gift. He was accepted, and married in, and took the name Stephanos Yoanân Stedinger. He adopted our sir name, and claimed to outsiders be a distant Greek and Hebrew relative whose blood had been displaced by Roman slavery. He fathered many children, all of them dark eyed and dark haired and pale skinned, all quick to learn with odd powers such as he, yet diminished.

It became readily apparent that Stephanos did not age at all, except in his eyes, which became deeper wells of wisdom. He actually seemed to grow more beautiful as he aged. He would leave his progeny with instructions, and disappear for years, only to return when they where close to his age, and send them away on various errands from which they would never return. Our secret family history suggested that he was marrying them off into far flung noble families, and placing them within places of importance of the clergy, to expand his strange interests, what ever they might be. Then he would assume their place and name within the clan, and the leadership of the clan in their stead.

“Stop”, I proclaimed! “This all interests me, but we are talking millennia ago, what does this mean to me now, I want to know the more immediate ******** truth right now. Can’t this wait?”

He laughed cruelly at me, like a hyena stalking it’s prey on some moonless night; it echoed through everything. I could feel it pass through me as it did the misty plane of nothing, but it was more like I could sense it, like I imagined the feeling. “You don’t know what has happened do you”, he questioned? “You think this is some sort of dream, and astral projection, a vision. No, you are dead, and this is purgatory. You cannot escape here but by freeing your mind. There are countless souls here, but only messengers with special permission such as I can speak to you briefly in a thousand years perhaps. What you saw before was paradise, but you could not ascertain it, because you could not free your mind. What closed in around you was the true horrible spiritual death, but you had enough strength in you to escape it. You see, you can sit here, feeling nothing, and seeing nothing, and hearing nothing but yourself, for time untold. The only way you can get out is to free your mind from the world. Yet, I have portioned to speak to you, for the blood of the Amon runs almost pure in you, and I can thus use you for the greater good of all, but it is not an easy path, and you must contract your soul on the pain of eternal torment that you will follow my instructions to the letter.”

“The marble I held in my hand, was that really my daughter”, I spoke desperately. “Yes”, he answered, “now you are catching on. The blood is strong in her as well, but does she have the strength to make it even here, with her young mind, to linger for eternity to find something she can’t even begin to comprehend? Or will the darkness devour her, again and again for eternity?”

“This is not fair you ******** b*****d”, I proclaimed as I lunged at him, yet I passed straight through him. He began to dissipate in a look of anger and pain into smoke, but his failing wavered, and he clung to his form in a look of twisted agony. Then he laughed again, in wincing pain. “More powerful then I thought possible at this stage, good, but you almost blew it all. Listen to me, this is not my game, I am only a pawn in it like you, but a pawn can do some good in his small ways that may ripple into tsunami’s. You need to understand everything, before you make your decision. If you don’t care about yourself, think about your daughter. Your daughter is still alive, and this short cut deal, which I didn’t have the privilege off, will save her as well. “

“You mean you struggled through all this, to become what you are,” I asked? “No”, he proclaimed grimly , “I earned it in life. I was crucified loosely enough to be slain by affixation while my flesh roasted over a afire hot enough to char my skin, but not hot enough to kill me quickly. I was Naked, and exposed to various other elements. My Wife and children where drawn and quartered before me, all in public spectacle, as I died in horror. I died in horror fight for a freedom and path to enlightenment in which your kind squandered, but I kept my faith in what I found within me. You, you loose it so fast, and yet you are offered a chance at redemption, a chance at redeeming and renewing mankind, for nothing but the inheritance of your blood; and you, you through faith aside and attempt to destroy me with the same feral furry that destroyed a world I helped build through my sacrifices, a world that you lounged in, you need to heed me now ingrate!”

His rage was queer, for he seemed to grow more human in demeanor and form, and age slightly before my eyes. Then he calmed some, and changed again, a metamorphosis that left him much like a moving statue of marble, with eyes that where deep, burning, echoes of remorse. “Yet this is inevitable”, he spoke softly, nearly at a whisper, “I found great strength from love in life, and you have found it in death I see. Mankind could never seem to abate it’s thirst for angst; yet your burdens where not natural, yet mechanical, poisoning the tree of life instead of shape it’s growth.

Remember this John”, his mention of my name struck me like alms of recognition in a plaguing blizzard of amnesia, “that this passage to spiritual fluidity, that you will indeed earn properly overtime, is a deceptive place. The light is what you would considered enlightenment, fulfillment, dare I say ‘good‘. The purest light cannot be utterly destroyed without it’s coessential sacrifice, or a suicidal pursuit of its illuminating devotions. The purest darkness, your so said ’evil’ can only be destroyed by an instrument of it’s pursuits of treachery, and must be forgiven to be forever annihilated. Never forget that each waxes and wanes in times, and can turn each other to their own will. During such imbalances. Thus the essence of the light can be found in the shadow, as might the darkness alter the light. You must always be wary, in evaluating every being on all levels that you encounter, it is key to your survival as a traveler.”

“But I thought you where going to return me to paradise”, I rebuked; and he said, “No, I said I would free you and your child from madness in purgatory. There is a reason you get this offer, and you must enter the garden, and eat the fruit of knowledge, and then the fruit of life, and return to hell first. Their you will give testimony to what you have seen, and are yet to see. But my broken little Johnny, we have much to do yet, and little time to do it, before your connection between your soul and body is lost. So lets get back on track!”

He continued, yet he seemed more human from this point on, as if he had found some point of empathy, or released some burden: “At the start of the Twelfth Century, he sent five of his progeny to the church in German, and received commission to found Stederling in the northern marsh lands of what is now near, what was Bremen. In exchange for a small tithe of taxes, they where given right to grow this land under the law of religious and political freedom. Many Dutch settlers came, and with Dikes and inventive land development techniques, couple with the air of free thought, they developed into an industrious race of free thinking people who lived in extraordinarily democracy for their time.

Only several years after dispatching these delegates of his to found this land, he influenced the formation of the Knights Templar. He played a key role in the development of both groups, and made the Templar’s strong by providing them with ancient Masonic secrets, the lost knowledge of the Amon, Jesus, and John, and the other Nineteen legitimate Messiahs he had knowledge of around the world. His progeny he infused in this association, and in the land of the Stederings. Where the rest of his multitudes had dispersed to, none knew rightly.”

“I know what happened to the Templar’s”, I interrupted, “they where exterminated both for heresy, and a lust for the lands they owned, by the French royalty and the Pope. Though many of them escaped, to debated destinations of long myth and tale, but what of these Stederlings, my ancestors?”

“Most myths about the Templar’s are true”, He replied, “which is as important as was their impact on civilization. They led to the birth of International Banking, Switzerland, and the reformation of the Masons. They advanced economics, and architecture, and science in such as way as to lay the seeds for the Renaissance. As for the Stederlings, they reformed the ideology of democracy, or a republic, lost with the fall of the Roman empire, and challenged the order of a Catholic backed theocratic system of western nobility. These where seeds, as well of the seeds of the Templar’s, for the great ones dream was to form an organization to rival the church, armed with the truth, and turn of Europe all of Europe into a communal republican democracy. He would have Done away with the perverted Roman Catholics, and elevated the serfs and peasants into land owning farmers, scientists, craftsmen, and artisans, with an economy more advanced then any before it known history, and an unconquerable military order of Knights. He would have crafted an empire greater then any before, united beneath the creed of truth, the enlightenment of the Amon who ate freely not and not in sin, from the tree of knowledge, and communed with the evolving subconscious of the true ’God’.

He would have prevented many atrocities, eventually uniting the world in paradise. He would have prevented this final holocaust”, he stopped for a minute as if reflecting sadly, and became as a statue again. “Instead their where more crusades, and inquisitions, accept against Europeans. Heretics’, witches, free thinkers, what ever you have it. The Stederlings where first, and next the Cathars, and the Templar’s. There where many others as well, individuals, this period became a broad excuse for eliminating anything and anyone who might stand against the perverse order. The saplings where planted, but they where chopped down in ruthless cold murder in the false name of Christ. But there seeds where spread in the wind, and giving birth to hope, and revolutionizing the world. It almost made it despite itself; yet even in this endless winter of ashes, you, buy your lonely lamp, laying face down in recent death. In you there is hope. The hope that sprouts from the fields soaked with the blood of innocent women and children, from the smoking of people burning alive for their beliefs, from those trampled and tortured in war, revolution, and war, and revolution: the hope that will renew this poisoned earth, and resurrected the seeds of Etienne.”

“There is just two more questions I have for you before we go any further”, I asked? “First, you spoke of two messiahs, and then twenty one?” The Cherub thing that called itself Fred, looked at me, and said, “This you will understand more plainly if you are indeed strong enough to endure what needs to be done by you.”

“Ok, then what must we do? My child has been alone for I don’t know how long”, I concluded. “Don’t concern yourself with the time there, a thousand years could pass without a second moving if need be in the physical world. The only time you need to concern yourself is the time you spend in here away from your body and not being productive, the trip back will not be easy to endure if we do not move quickly. What I must know is, that you understand your heritage, that you are of a bloodline that comes from the garden, and has planted the seeds for the garden to cover the earth. It is your task now, John, to pave the way for the return of all messiahs as one, to light the darkness so the survivors can see them, and throw off the yoke of tyrants who reorder them in slavery. You must walk through the lost road to the Eden.

You will see many sights, and you will find the road to the garden. On that road you must gather your true self, the goodness within you, so that the guardian may not kill you. Remember, if you are the light, if you are fulfillment, and you believe it, your spirit can only perish through self sacrifice, or the pursuit of your devotion through suicide. Embrace the moment, and fear not, but believe in yourself. For your time for these things have not come. You have the power to survive, if you utterly believe this.”

“Who is this one messiah I am paving the road for”, I quibbled? “Why our patriarch, of course, Seth, the first hope for man after despair, the original incarnation of many, including Buddha, Christ, Oris, Moses,. Chrisna, John The Baptist, Stephen the Decon, and even our Etienne, as well as many others.”

“But John The Baptist, Jesus, and Stephen the Decon all lived at the same time”, I rebutted. “Yes, and time doesn’t exist as you comprehnd it to, and acts independently on many levels, but we are speaking of the trinity, for the Father paves the way with the light, the Son stains the earth read with the fathers words, and the Holy Ghost endures forever. Do you think when God truly sought to press his pressence at those most profound of moments, only a part of his emergence would become flesh. No, it all came to flesh, and yet remained dispersed, both physically and spiritually: concentrated, and unconcentrated.”

“Yet it seems you hold Etienne, or Stephanous above them all; for if there is all this richer truth, then why do you speak so richly of him in my education”, I contested. “It’s quite simple he replied”, for he was the last to truly come, and he was more subtle, yet far more effective then his predecessors. Without his actions, humanity never would have ascertained it’s pinicale to begin to see the truth. It may appear now that his works where flawed, or for naught, but the last bones are far from tossed. Furthermore, you are to be a prophet of the west, where the works of the word have largely been expressed through Christianity and Judaism. His legacy is tied to this, and thus your legacy shall be. Yet it will be a new beginning, from the purity of things old and lost. If that is not enough, Etienne is distant kin to both you and me.”

“This doesn’t sound like Christianty as I have studdied it”, I echoed. “No”, he said, “it’s not. It’s the foundation of all religions that have ever really meant anything. The old wild shamanistic religions may have effected it some, but it is the asscertation of free will in part of the old God interchanging with the collective soul of the new God. Don’t you understand, we influence each other, and that influences the collective soul, as the collective soul influences us, and individuals also influence the collective soul. It may sound confusing, but there are powers at work that once understood this. These powers sought to hsape the universe metaphysically as there ego sought fit, to deify themselves. They don’t understand the forces that are guiding them do not have free will, and they are inadvertently doing the work of the word as I call it. Creating opposition to progress so that we have a lesson to suffer through, and that we all might see a greater sense of beauty through pain, so that the word can no a greater sense of beauty. Everything is a part of God, but once again, only human souls have the power that I know of to change the greater body.”

He waved his hand through the ethereal sea of purgatory’s fog as if attempting to shake off some infinite lethargy. “Enough I say”, he commented. “You have heard everything you need to here, now you must see more, and do. Now keep what I taught you about absence and fulfilment, the darkness and the light, foremost in your mind. You will find everything that I have said to you is herby burnt into your memory word for word!”

His right hand began to swirl so fast it looked as if it where a motionless blurr, and infinite number of hands. He spoke aloud, in a bombing voice, “Ominous Prestos”, he comanded! Suddenly a hole opened in the fabric of misty infinitiy, and a soft odd silver light leaked through. “Understand”, he said, “there are many dimensions. There are multiple dimensions to everything, time, energy, mass, conscious, and the soul. You are leaving now purgatory, to walk a lost road, where a place of past, infinity, and spirit cross. I have already told you what you must do. You are still dead, a spirit, but you harbor something of the present of great value, that which can change things! Now go, and find your way back to Hell so you can minister to the lost!”

I stepped through the hole, and into a wide plain of deep jade green grass, lit by a golden star with silver veins through it’s thick rain of light. My feet where fastened to a pure white flag stone path. I was naked, but the light was warm. I felt more substantial then I did in purgatory, yet my form was still inconsistent. Something warm pulsed in my left hand, It was my daughters marble! I clenched it toght and held it to my heart. While mine was silent, I could feel her’s beat, and it riveted through me.

I gazed ahead, and in the distance I could see two great trees, but it was hard to guess at their distance; for the whole of this realm seemed to act as if where governed by differing spacial laws: or perhaps it was a lack of governance at all? The trees where my obvious destination, so I preceeded henceforth.

I figured I was heading west, for I could follow the stars descent, and had to imagine that it was some form of the sun. A light breeze picked up in my face, sooth like velvet just off a warm iron. It carried the fragrence of fresh flowers, sweet like a mixture of jasmine and orange blossoms. Suddenly, flowers began to rain out of the air, blossoms with colored pettals that bridge the full spectrum. They melted like snow flakes as they caressed by bare flesh: dissolving to a cool liquid that refreshed me as it absorbed into my skin; growing warm as it mingeled with my blood; arosing me to an indescribable euphoria as if ecstatic currents traveled the rivers of my veins. My nostrils where filled with the sweet scent of opium, and my tounge laced with and texture of thick wine.

The consistency of my form stumbled, as the inconsistency of my essence walked with straighter purpose. I was a duality again. I could feel the linger connection to my body as if it where there, yet I recognized the compass of my soul in truer length then I could ever imagine. I recognized many things about my shape as this traveler, and I realized the road was preparing me for my destination. It seemed as if the alchemy within my veins sung some note of recognition, whipering unspoken arcane melodies to a long forgotten lover who had found his way home amist a sea of amnesia: I could tell I was being transfigured.

Ok I read some. Your prose is dense, I think if this is novel material that you need to simplify that a bit. You are a really wonderful writer but It is after 10 and I have to work in the morning. I will return.

I did not forget this, but I have had a sharp downturn in mood as of about 24 hours ago and cannot focus on anything. I know you don't mind, but I insist on saying so. I always enjoyed what I read in the past.

I realized that there was only one approach to the gates, a straight lane that created by a field of thick thorn bushes extending out from the looming wall like a field of barb wire in a war zone. As I approached, I felt the energy draw away from the land some what. A great whirl wind formed in the lane, drawing the dirt like a dust devil but spraying it at me in a blinding haze. My eyes teamed with tears, and my vision blurred as I shielded my face. With my right arm. Suddenly the whirl wind shifted into the thorn bushes, and a litany of dagger sized thorns shot at me as if a course of machine gun fire. Half blind, I tried to dodge, but one grazed my arm and ripped it open. My blood gushed forth soaking into the ground, and I fell screaming in pain.

Suddenly, looking at the laceration in my arm and thinking I was doomed, I realized I was supposed to be dead already in my desperation. It was as if my body reacted to the second of my revelation, and not a moment to soon. My form must have become insubstantial, for a hail of thorn blades past right the my silhouette and deep into the earth.

Dumb founded, I realized I was still in pain. I looked at my arm, and willed it to heal. To my lessening amazement, the damage to my arm disappeared. Suddenly, crimson flowers blossomed from the ground where my blood was spilled. I rose to my feet and another hail of missiles passed through me.

The whirl wind subsided, in it’s place stood a ten foot tall being, lithe yet taught, acrogenous and beautiful. He was dressed in a snow white silk robe, and adorned with a golden belt that held a silver horn wrought with ancient runes. Barefoot yet hovering slightly off the ground, he wore a golden sash about his neck, and held a great broad sword in his right hand. His long hair was silver as light of the moon, and writhed angry snakes; his eyes burned golden with the fire of the sun, and his face was sharply beautiful, and pale smooth like perfect marble. I could feel his aura, it was powerful and close to divinity, and permeated the entire vale. I seemed to under stand that normal this force of his presence alone would either slay, paralyze, or drive me away in fear by itself; yet I was untroubled by it. As a matter of fact I think my soul drank from some point of this power, and became in turn more potent it self: doubt! The Angel feared me!

“What do you want lost soul”, his voiced boomed deep ominous question, trembling the earth? “Certainly you have seen the paradise that was meant for you, and lost it. You should have settled for purgatory and earned it back, for none may pass here.”

“Gabriel is it then”, I asked? “I must pass here for I for see my destiny”

He laughed at me hysterically, and the blossoms of my blood wilted. “You have seen hell also, in more then one form, and have no doubt that I will send you there brutally if you proceed, one way or the other. For the wide land about you is a sort of purgatory itself, yet more pleasant. You should rethink your course, and enjoy it. You will forget your worldly purpose in time, and perhaps find a new one; yet what lies beyond these gates is not for you, blood of Amon, your cursed family ruined that chance for all of man. Man must find it’s redemption through toil now, not through grace.”

I stepped forward, he tensed and raised his sword. “So be it, for I am not of the flesh either, nor is my blade, it will not pass through you with out biting you for eternity, and the spirits of this place, they shall smite you as well.

His broad sword wreathed into flame, “I am not Gabriel as the foolish Christians named me, I am Marduk, god of the Land of Summer! It was with this blade a I slew Tiamat, from who’s scales the Titans sown the world as my vessel. It was your race that damned me, treating with that infernal ghost. Yet my hour of revenge is here! You bring the key to my freedom, I shall eat your soul in delight, and turn loose my shackles!”

His rage was so great I gave pause to listen, every word he spoke turned around in my soul as he leapt into action, unlocking instinctual reactions from my souls wisdom to combat him. He thrust his cruel brand of flame into the torn wall, and it burst into a great inferno. A deluge of fire flooded forth to consume me like a wild maw, but without hesitation I cried, “Actus Aglido!” The water from the four rivers gushed forth to unify as a great fists slamming the wall, Mardock, and the assaulting flames. A great cloud of steam and reek exploded to obscure the entire valley from sight. I could feel it’s boiling heat, yet I was not scolded.

He screamed in rage, and a gale came from him knocking me from my feet and cleansing the cloud from the valley, reveal his true visage. He towered before me, tall, muscular, with crimson skin and yellow eyes. He had four horns sticking from his head, and his broad sword steamed from it’s extinguished flame, he wore but a loin cloth. “So you inspired Lucifer as well I imagine” I laughed.

“You think this is funny Amon? You have grown powerful fast, b*****d of Canaan-Nod. The word always favored it’s true children, even in their failures. What favor does it show us, it’s living vestiges, it’s first offspring, and their creations. It polluted my children with it’s chosen blood. No you will die here, for eternity; and I will be free, at not at a more advantageous time to make things right. The old ones shall all rise again!”

He lifted his great broad sword two handed overhead, and brought it down upon me like a falling mountain. Once again, the instincts of my soul react as I felt my daughters marbles pulse in my left hand. I swung it forward in a fist to meet his blade. My glowing white fist and ancient deific steel met. A sonic boom ensued as the sound barrier was crushed, and his sword shattered into thousands of shards that ripped back through him like shrapnel: shredding the angelic, diabolic, would be god into utter annihilation. As he exploded into a diced mess, the matter of his form flared into fire and quickly became a cloud of ash. The cloud of his remains tried to take some spectral shape reaching for me in vanity, yet a great wind from the south arose and dispersed it.

Alright, I have caught up with what you have displayed so far.

I like it.

Imagery the character describes while he is in purgatory speaking to Frederick. Hmm and after speaking to him as well. I cannot be bothered just now to look through that massive wall of text to quote examples, but... it was very alive and palpable, his descriptions.

You know the stederling's, and the Von Tuehlen's are really my realitives. Their actually was a crusade that lasted thirty years against them proclaimed by the catholic church(the steaderlings)...the other side was a nobel family, connected to the knights templar and persecuted.

well, the alternative christinaity stuff is some twisting of the gnostic and coptic gospels, the history is from various sources, and the beliefs on God and certain twists are mine, from personal, visions. The idea of an alternate form of man is a tolkienish theme, along with the struggle between light and darkness...the elves in tolkiens world where supposed to be a symbolic representation of what man was ment to be like before the world was corrupted.