Swimming in the Continuum

Set adrift again, perhaps the mental grapple and ensnarement, the consumption of such sinister spirits was more than One of Many had bargained for…..the voice in the furnace….the bodies burned in that pyre….it had all been done without so much as a warning. Amun was just a singular irregularity, a vicious anomaly to the constant of the universe and nature…why should he matter? Why should any of it “matter” when compare to the likes of beings such as these?

How long has it been? Moments or years? No, not years, not decades, not centuries, no time. There was no sense of it. Time, a human pondering, a human limitation, a human measurement uneeded and unheeded now. Precious time, like so much sand that can never be contained, just reflected on as it slips on by. Could this be a freedom from the coil? Dread was the notion for here he was rebuilt, reconnected, recentered and reconstructed again and again, wet womb and cold, empty grave, endless cycles of new and renewed purpose. He could access his libraries, lists and lexicons here, make plans and try, try again. The great Eldritch mystery yawned and gaped before him to dive into and at greater depths. The currents took him there, the great abysmal chasm an ocean of twilight and knowledge. The continuum, nothing but so much phytoplankton to the killer whale of Carcosa to consume (again and again).

For a time, he left the planet, projected from his fleshy vessel and need for it fell away and the corporeal realm was the last thing he could recall absently. He was a part of it all, communing with the continuum itself, making pact with the depths of oblivion there - so many there (YOU MAY DIE YOUR FINAL DEATH THERE YET, Covenant breaker). The moment before, or how long ago was it? No matter, no more….Amun recalled entering the inlaid circle of his making, the communing portal or was it shaded grove in some foreign dream-scape? No matter, It was a last thing he could recall being part of that world in sinewy boundaring. The limits, there for an instant, a reminder of limits and cautions…..he yielded and dissipated.

Now, there was this. He had wanted this, driven to it. Time was gone, but he didn't know if he was free of its grasp and at what cost? This time, time, all of eternity stretched for forward forever and through him, through the sigils, the light and glow coming from him was connected to the oceanic depths - a signal, channel of messages and energies and echoes…all him.

Single second, *plip*. *Plip, plop*, a million years, but somehow all the same. It's all the same. Flat and seen from afar. This was the way they witness (and watch and wait) it all and looked at them, their humans in the snares and cages, births, fornications and deaths. They looked on in astral audiences: learning, entertained, and harvesting beliefs so that they may continue. Three paths, three trials and three doors (fire, the offertory lamb and the great architect), leading to many more doors - but it is they that dwell beyond the veil that judge and decide - always them. Why not we, the many scattered and confused insects, why are we not to decide for ourselves?

Now, what could only be best described as neon color, flashes of brilliant radiation spilled forth from this distortion of flight through a deep space. He was at ease with his unmaking and refinement. No motion though, yet there is a brilliant white (birth, pulled from a peaceful mire of nourishment. Damn You!) that is and was so familiar. It is when we left the astral Lillith’s womb (first mother), another birth now (I will not forget your face), and a reckoning (to what price this time) all of this melted into a flat perceivable disc of moment. If we all stopped blinking our eye, how long would it take to notice such a feat? The meaning, the meaning! Do not forsake the truth and suffer more. Carry the burden of thousands of these discs, return refreshed.

There was the reaction, still a familiar mortal anchor. Somehow, the alkali metallic taste on tongue, bite hard you wilty prick! Well practiced to go back, remain in the coil a bit longer. Amun returns from the void to the snare, the spiral ever tightening, but time was gone and the quest could continue with new questions outside of the new doors, and this was a brilliant path ahead. Now to wander (wonder) upon, was this an undiscovered plane? A new mortality had died. He saw the universe being born, stretch, consume, grow and the entropy eat away at it again. The star stuff and the twilight ocean. Be thee the ever-present and humbled earth then, suffer not the royal whims of the lofted stars. We are smaller as the depths, yet to go deeper, for the predators are always present, the pressure of the depths the shape and adapt us. To not become prey of these beasts, mere cannon fodder and carrion upon forgotten plains of the ill-gotten conquests - this means to sign pacts as these and never stop being the predator.

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He saw it's death, it’s life and could no longer see the difference between the two.

*******

Sullied and wet from the renewal. He spat blood from his tongue, last time he recalled it being his cheek, no matter. His jaw ached from the self masticated signal to leave the communing, it was dangerous to linger too long there. How many times and trials? The coil of this damnable spiral went on and on before him. He dizzied at the thought, quite literally. He wretched, welcoming even that human reaction. These echoes were nauseating. He took the mead and swished and swallowed.

He dashed a bit of oil and lit the bloody sputum, leave no trace for them to follow him by. Best to just burn it all down for an intact stronghold may someday be used against him (as the great nagly-mason did not flee from yon prison at the price of Athens). A sneer of will (he would need to eat something soon) and a dash of faerie fire, these old timbers would burn out of control in minutes.

Asmoedon sensed the momentary weakening and didn’t hesitate to test his will, bucking and hollering from its cage, Amun though suffering, commanded the prisoner it reveal it’s intent, “Say thy true names beast or be still in thine cell!”

“We are the ones who dwell within! [in Hebrew] I am the one who dwelt within CAIN, his bloody club! [in Latin] I am the one who dwelt within NERO as the flames rose! [in Greek] I once dwelt within JUDAS, betrayer of brothers! [in German] I was with Legion, as you long for your mind to be! [in Assyrian Neo-Aramaic] I am Belial and I will not tell you truths! [in English] And I am Lucifer, the devil in the flesh! You are nothing before our kingdom and our kind! We will take you and ride within your ugly, rotted flesh bag! The witch that laid with you also lied to you, you are not meant to carry our burden!”

Amun paused and allowed some space to pass and a quiet drift into his mind, he hummed the mantra and steadied his ragged breath, he released the doubt. As the flames climbed the walls around him, he rose and slipped the simple sandals on. The time to leave had passed. Amun felt his cranial companion patter and wilt eventually. Eventually, but it was a shock of warning.

Comically, as Amun drilled his fingers patiently against the fencing, pondering which path to take, Asmoedon actually had begun to pace back in forth, beast in cage as it was, in cerebral sensation only, but the rhythm felt true. Mercifully, for such a time passed, Amun spoke through crushing will upon the ensnared creature - truly, in Amun’s mind he brought a great fist of pure mental intent down savagely upon the upstart to teach it it’s place - for it’s local was no place but in the sigilled skull of the warlock, to be held for as long as he held breathe and perhaps longer. Squashed under it’s force, another puff of ash spurting out from the savage grounding, the former fallen lord of the nine ringed fires was utterly trounced and it’s silence and stillness was a pleasant swathe of balm to Amun’s troubled brow. Asmoedon had troubled him into a headache apparently, so he chose the left path and hummed merrily as he went.

Amun’s mental command was nought but a whisper in the cell, but truly held the weight of an imploding star, “Not again. You will not raise a voice, nor banner, nor intent against me ever again. You serve, or I will draw you out in a thin line - shitty, slithering sinew by sinew, scale by slimey scale in a measure of gorey death that will quiet the very forges your whorish mother birthed you in. Do ye ken?”

With that, a new pact was forged between the two, the demon had tested Amun, but know knew its place. Subjugation.

There on Asmoedon feared to make even “eye contact” with it’s lord, the new Warden, so was the command and so was it done.

Again and again for many to come.