Surrounded by carved and maliciously strewn bodies of the worshippers, Ashtoreth and Mercury stand face to face. Ashtoreth says, “My, how the mighty has fallen. Do you have no memory of who you were before Mercury?” No response. She begins again, “Once you were the protector of the helpless, finder of the lost, knower of things unseen. That armor was fashioned for you in the heart of a star. Do you remember?”
The Empty vessel before her does not, but somewhere in some dreamless sleep, The True Mercury does hear and understand. He is in a deep place, at the center of the Earth. A place of great heat and darkness. Pools of red magma and harsh smoke burn his eyes.
The True Mercury remembers a time before, when he Persephone and Solomon were here. He just wanted to help them get free, but he didn’t know what he was giving up. He sent Solomon into the world to spark Demeter on a quest of rescue. It was foolish. He knew Sorsos is a trickster, a shape shifter but he was mortally wounded so he gave him the Armor of the Fallen Star.
For a second the inner fire behind the mask of the Black Knight wavers, goes out. Artemis smiles and in and instant strikes down Mercury’s corpse in his Haunted Armor revealing the craven Giant King: Sorsos the Sorcerer. Now laid plain in his own Deathly form, a Corpse wearing a crown, a scarlet cloak a gold chalice. But this is a ruse.
Ashtoreth has seen these Objects of Power in the hands of another, an ally and a radiant soul now enshrined with the inner guidance of ancient Demeter who sacrificed her self. Solomon was never one to not bluff and bluster. Solomon The Sorcerer says, “At last you have been humbled.” Ashtoreth responds, “You, who walked eternity in bliss while the world toiled in blight. You who said, ‘You are above the Heavens and the Lord of Hosts.’ Your mediocre schemes are not even worth contempt, the cheap solo minded corruption of the morally weak, ethically sterile and spiritually destitute.” Solomon hisses and lunges only to be sliced across the torso without effort by Ashtoreth.
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Ashtoreth smiles, “Your ‘Lord of Hosts’ is a mediocre criminal. An imposter and insolent child. Trying to burn the world alive in a tantrum. Over what? Spite? Jealousy? Some perceived slight? Myopic self obsession is so transparent its comical, as if there is some grand design behind selfish pursuit of power and riches with no grand plan for the music of the universe or the magic of the celestial order. Truly an unworthy God to rule even a rock or a field, maybe he would be at home in a toilet like your intolerant Talmud and the perversity of war profiteers dressing up as political figures of peace. You can’t even be honest about the blood thirst of your Demonic God.”
Ashtoreth continues with spears in the eyes from Solomon. “Aries serves the false creator, The Demiurge. An imposter for the primal energy of the universe, bastardized by a parasitic wasp with no sense of shame or duty to the devoted slaves the cult of Yaldabaoth. The Demiurge of genocide and inflicted suffering. Feeding on the offerings of your betters. The God of Israel is an imposter, a villain of the lowest kind. Aries and his cult of demon worship will end today.” Ashtoreth has never stopped to consider if the generations Persephone spent in the underworld could have soured her to the teachings of the old ways. If she didn’t secretly enjoy the perversity of Aries subjugation. The idea she would conspire to defeat her own mother, starting a chain reaction that would betray the Goddesses into oblivion, their wombs made barren and harsh winters from which the crops never recover, long summers of blight and drought would become normal as she drifts farther into her negative manifestation Hecate of Lamashtu’s “Night Tribes,” a forgotten Goddess of infant sacrifice and mirror to “Yahova the Yaldabaoth” once known as Aries.
Solomon laughs, he says “I will rid this world of the Albigensian Gnosis, Mystics and all inferior Gods. Prostitute temples will burn, your children sold as slaves. Your men sacrificed in wars with allies turned to our cause. We will deplete you by proxy. Watching your people wither under weak leaders and minstrel play politics, chasing money and never stopping to question why things are the way they are. I will smash your memory, remove your temples and put your fertile lands to the torch. Salting your crops and seeding seething locusts into your heartland.” He turns to dust that swirls into nothing. In the sky the apparition of a great furnace to Moloch. The armies of Baal appear on the horizon, a thundering from the Heavens as a Wild Hunt crests the clouds. Hundreds of Thousands of Deathless Warriors, Ghosts, Animal Spirits, Centuries of the Fallen Warriors, come roaring down from the stormy sky.