Last Emissary: Sraosha (I)

Day 1

‘Tis the dawn of the first day. I am Sraosha צ, last of the envoys of the Great One sent to this Earth. ‘Though the world lieth in ruin, the Almighty hath graced me with a temple replete with ancient Scripture, or so do I believe; no message hath to me been spoken, in any event, but Its Providence is felt everywhere. This shall be the last haven in this world against the Terror, and the birthplace of the land’s long-term Resurrection.

Sraosha; that is the name I had been given when created. The Master’s Children raised me from that pallid lake in the Upper Kingdom, where all our kind are born; I yet remember the mirthful singing of the Saints as I arose, wings yet tender and frail. I remember – I remember the Bearer of the Sun lowering its wings above my head, the three claws gently falling on my hair, and the word that would be made my name spewed from its youthful throat. Sraosha; I am told it had once meant “conscience” in one of the languages spoken by Bet-Chavvah. I am told that my Letter is from one of the names of the Great One, but there are too many of them to remember; it is not the duty of my people to do so, in any event. The Thousandfold Name is not to be fully known or spoken by mortal mouths, it is said.

Beneath this temple is a storage-room; a place where the Bet-Chavvah once kept their food. Many such places had once existed, I believe. The books of the Akashic Record often housed myriad pages on the artcrafts pursued by them; cookery was one that had survived since the dawn of their race. Now, few such storerooms remain, and many are tainted – if not by the Terror, then by the folly of the Bet-Chavvah, who brought calamity upon themselves with uranium-fire.  None of them remain in this temple; not above-ground, anyway. When I arrived, the ones that once lived here had long been buried; whichever ones were not have surely been swallowed up by time. I am overcome with a great sadness as my pen drifts along this page – my eyes weigh themselves and ache. There is enough food downstairs for any one of them to survive a decade; the handful who were here had believed that they would weather the storm of their undoing for generations. Dear Master, why were they allowed this illusion? Why could they not have met their fates with peace? My cheeks burn, by stomach churns – I have had to eat from their stores to remain whole. Forgive me, please. I hope that I can heal this land in your stead.

Night, First Day

Diary mine, place of my refuge;

I have been assailed by a terrible, terrible dream. My Light wavers – my heart beats furiously in my chest. Great birds of prey upon the skies; upon their metal hulls the shapes and writing of hateful menfolk, within their stomach the miniature suns that brought down Calamity upon the soil. I see them – children huddled together under a bed, starved already from the embargoes, the corpses of their parents rotting in their living-rooms, hands clutched to spotless forks around empty plates. I see them – lonely men roaming the streets, and women and others too, carrying on their shoulders bags of drugs and firearms and organs; anything to sell for anything with which to buy, despair clung to in their last moments as the bombs fell. I see them – mothers giving birth to headless children, thinned to the bone by lack of nourishment; hospitals worked dry, worked skinless, until the tiles on their walls fell and revealed the blackened mold underneath.

I see him through the window of my room, beyond the garden, on the other side of the river, between the perished ruins of their buildings. I see him sat on his black horse, eyeless and noseless and earless, all mouth; I see its stomach overflowing, its fat  dangling from the sides of his mount. I see the crowns upon his head, tangled with his horns, gold and diamonds and ivory: three such, bearing the names CAPITAL, and AVARICE, and GLUTTONY. I see in its right hand those carefully-balanced scales, empty and hungry but perfectly even; I see in its left hand a firearm in the likeness of the rifles of the Bet-Chavvah, a weapon of thunder and malice. He is the first to dawn upon this land; three more remain. I can only hope that the Great One will take pity on this planet before they all can do so.

Diary mine – what hope remains for us, after all?


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