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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