THE RITUAL

The smothering dust envelops the chanting lips as the last of the components are sprawled across the summoning circle. Air is thick with the scent of gore, freshly disemboweled corpse providing a visage most fitting for the smell. However, it is not this lone aroma that occupies the air.

Scarce pomegranate can also be felt from the splattered remains of the fruit on the floor. Crushed rat bones form a sentence in a language that never was, the meaning of which is as elusive as its heritage.

Above the mystical elements, stands a man. His body laid bare in front of the vile ordeal. The veiny, skinny form stands above the transpiring occult. Skin covered with scars and tattoos, a conduit for the sorcery he beckons. Eyes are wary as they dart through the words of ancient languages. 

Pulling with their sight the notes of a vile cacophony. Unto the realm of the channeler, falls a dire slump. Cradled inside the corpse laid on offer, curled up in its bifurcated ribcage, is a creature, size of a young child. Its body, however, resembles not a humanoid form. 

The ritual births a biological mess. A crustacean shell covering a body akin to that of a cat. The head, conforms to no such feline form. Instead being composed of six sharp talons which close inwards. Resembling a venus fly trap which has grasped its prey. The legs of the creature are composed of no fur nor skin. Instead, they are represented by the dark and writhing muscles which seem to have no bones. Rather than feet, they end in eyes akin to that of a fly. 

A mess it may be, but to the mystic that now falls to his knees from exhaustion, the creature is a promise. Promise of knowledge. Many men go insane before even reaching the first peak of the tumultuous mysteries. Yet he still stays sane, or preoccupied by the success to notice. 

Short is the time that passes before the child of the ritual is put to a good use. Mystic takes it in his hands, seemingly unafraid of its earthly guise. He does not mind the repeated scraping of the child’s shell against his skin, preferring to focus on business for which he conducted the ritual in the first place.

Entering the next room, both find themselves in a peculiarly decorated area. The walls are all painted teal, covered in many marks which resemble those on the scrawny man’s skin. Along their edges stretch purple candles of varying heights, all lit and prepared for what comes next. Center of the room is occupied with a single desk draped in black. On its surface, rests a bowl made out of bronze. Next to it, a large mirror frame with no mirror.

The child of the ritual is put inside it, beginning to skitter and shiver. The six-taloned maw opens wide, exuding crimson, blobby, goo from an unseen orifice. It spills both in the bowl and the table. Mystic merely watches as the creature keeps regurgitating for a full minute. At the end of it, the child lays down in the bowl half filled with its own expulsions, curling up like a sleeping cat.

Mystic collects that which is outside the bowl in a goblet of birchwood. Then, he circles the room with the same goblet going through the flames of the candles. The movement is intentional, filled with purpose. Each step choreographed. Finally, the circle is completed. At its end, the candles grow dim, the flame extinguished. The smell of wax looms calmly in the room. 

In the darkness of the room, the brew within the goblet turns into a gray liquid. Swirling on its own as if moved by the winds of the ritual’s energy. The mystic drinks it. 

As the last few drops enter his throat, the retching already giving way to nausea, the mystic feels odd. The empty mirror frame crafted out of meteorite seemingly teeming with eerie magnetism.

His skin bubbles and tension grows. Across the scars sparks a thin red line, connecting the odd scratchings in the shell of the mystic. The searing pain cuts sharp in the mind as the hands tense up in anguish, dropping the goblet. Once all have connected, slowly, ever so achingly, the skin starts to peel off. As if slipping off the muscle. Mystic finds himself unable to scream as the shock of the situation clogs the throat. 

Shuffling motions march the parchments of skin that peel off towards the meteorite mirror. Wrapping around the frame. Forming a patchwork of skin that tightens across the frame in a perfect, rectangular shape. The skinned mystic has nothing but pain left for the following few minutes. Imminence of contact causing repeated pain with every movement. 

When the pain becomes more accepted in the mind’s eye, and the body is too chaffed to feel imminent hurt, the mystic rises to his feet. Now he stares forward, observing the skin-wrapped frame with lidless eyes. Approaching close, the flaps of the skin open. Slightly so to allow passage. A squeeze between what used to be his skin leads the mystic to a foreign vision.

The world beyond the skin’s veil is one of an uncertain sky. Shifting in the rain, clouds, sharp denial, and sun as an ever shifting shadow of unknown behemoth floats above obscured by the protecting shuffle of seasons. No reason to look at the skies when in front is a path to follow. One of mysteries and answers long sought.

The mystic sees what all see when first stepping on the path between folds of their own reality. A parade of statues made out of unknown stone, most akin to chalk in our own realm. Every statue, one of you.

Each statue is something that we may be.  Something where our lives would lead or have led to. Mystic sees hims who are still kids, shriveled old bones, a buff physique of one of he, and many mutilated ones who seem to have found their end in the most unfortunate of ways.

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Past the row of statues now stretches a road that doubles, intertwines, cuts off and sparks all across. The smell of chalk still remains, and will follow the mystic throughout the expedition.

Mystic is ready for this challenge. The teachings of the lost chronicles of Lemurian mystics offer knowledge in the ways one should move, focusing their thoughts to move the path instead of their legs. Aligning it under the crumbling forgetfulness lest you perish in the twirl of past and present.

Early on the road, among the ghosts of events. Mystic finds a more palpable vision. In a royal hall of cold stone, with the smell of chalk being mixed with fragrance of expensive perfumes he witnesses the following scene. A velvet monarch is chortling through frothing celebrations as their impish subjects stab their stomach with spades shoveling out the golden innards of their charitable ruler.

The mystic doesn’t understand the festivities, with the body that has forgotten pain in the world he left behind, he approaches. Monarch and the subjects pay little mind, continuing with their actions.

Murmurs sprawl from the inquisitive visitor: “Why do you let those under your rule injure you so? What is the purpose of this ritual?”

The monarch says with a cross face: “Injure? No, it is the release that they bring. Of my earthly possessions and countless gold. In the kingdom of man I was rewarded for greed but the coin holds no power here. In the kingdom of thought, idea, and future it only makes sense that I give and be loved for it. Their joyous digging is loosening my bloated belly.”

Murmur or two goes by again: “But when they come to the bottom of the belly, when all the gold runs out, what will you do?”

Monarch says smugly: “Run out? No such thing for a kingly position! Even if my belly would bear no more, they would feed me to harvest again. Subjects need a king, king that is me, and no king can rule without a coin. I needn’t worry because it is subjects that keep my gut stocked. They keep me a king and I keep them happy, without doing much more than sitting here.”

Mystic, disappointed by the fate of the king's subjects and monarch’s carefree position, marches on. However, he will remember this encounter in an eldritch inscription of his mind. Bolstering something within him.

Further down the road, past the three ever-collapsing bridges, another fruitful vision appears. Set inside of a circular meadow with three chairs with three scholarly men.

A snake winds around the throats of a triumvirate of sages who are unable to speak their eternal truths uncovered through years of scholarly pursuits seen on their worn eyelids.

Mystic approaches the suffocating image. Green grass offering more comfort than the cold throne room of the king, diluting the smell of chalk that follows. He wonders who to inquire for the three. Neither seems more experienced and he knows not if the throats will speak any words. At last he asks the snake:

“What crime did they do for their punishment to be such? What foreign secret is stuck in their throats?”

Snake nears its massive head to the mystic. Their eyes meeting at a moment of dead, ethereal silence. Then, the tongue of the snake bounces words off like notes on a guitar string: “Knowledge of how to stop man from asking questions. One no virtue nor sin can allow for.”

“Why would one pursue such knowledge? And to what end? Isn’t the search itself contradictory to the reason?”

“To rid themselves of uncertainty and fear. Happiness rests in ignorance.”, the snake’s rebuttal says.

And mystic didn’t know what to ask. Didn’t find himself happy with the response. The question asked just left more questions, ones whose answer he wouldn’t bother to ask. Wordlessly, he had forsaken the snake. But he hasn’t forsaken the answer, it will be a powerful ally despite its disappointing zest.

Further yet, across a dirt-covered field houses many trees who seem to have latched onto numerous men and beasts. Using them as stable soil and firm trunk to protect against the ever-shifting elements of the tumultuous weather in this foreign place. Near the end of the field tree grows out of a giant hare whose eyes bleed a river for the three pained offspring which bathe in her sorrowful crimson.

Confused yet inquisitive once again, the mystic asks: "Why do you allow the parasite to grow from you so? Your lifeblood cut short for one that feeds on it."

The hare lifts its head meekly, with pained breath it say: "When first the plant came to me it said 'I will merely travel with' and I accepted. When the plant started to grow, the digging of its roots started to ache. I asked it to stop and it said 'I will grow only a tinge more' and I accepted. When its heft became impossible to ignore, hampering my every hop it said 'you are weary, old, and tired, let me grow further and I will feed your next of kin, the kin of their kin too' and I accepted for what was left to do."

"It lied twice before, how do you know the third statement isn't a lie too?", the mystic notes.

Solemnly, the hare responds: "It may lie, I even expect it to. But I am worn and battered, unable to leave. Held in the ground by the overgrown roots. I can only pray to the between-of-betweens we are in that children that now bathe in my blood will forever survive."

The mystic thinks, motivated by curiosity, he asks: “What if I was to take your children? Would that be better than relying on a proven liar?”

Hare thinks through the pain: “A liar or a stranger. Not the kindest of choices for the fate of my children. But I’ve gotten this far with one pain, why switch it for another potential betrayal?”

The mystic insists: “Your children stay and starvation takes them as the tree is a parasite. Look upon many others within this field who have the same misfortune, and you’ll see it is so. Your blindness to its awful ways is a mistake of your own. There is no going back, your children may still survive with me but the parasite will only infect them with its own offspring.”

The hare thinks over for a second, looking over her lovely children, deep red from dried blood of her flowing tears. She bids them farewell as only a mother can. After, they join the mystic, hopping as ideas into his mind. The suffering of this meeting will stick with him for an eternity and the children will be his allies forevermore.

Behind the curtains of our reality he perceives further. The lidless eyes staring deep into the questions everlasting. He tries to remember, to retain. Trap each drop of revelation in a bucket called mind. The burning seas and its ghoulish residents, the island of chimeras, the dim clasp of a dying myrmidon…

However, the road eventually stops giving purchase to new discoveries. At some point this world has already turned him back towards the entrance which suddenly materializes at the front. Every time mystic attempts to walk the path again it circles back to the exit. It is apparent that he would need more ways to access other paths and hidden routes of this world beyond.

Mystic, confused and in pain sees a shaky vision of the room within which he breached the threshold. However, his body feels different.

Different from the shell it was upon entrance, different from the skinless temple of pain that crossed the border.  He finds a mirror near and gazes. The one looking for eldritch arts notes the features of his body. It is the features of a young man no more than twenty years old. The scars and markings are gone, and skin back to its expected spot.

A new body, it warrants a new name. Fresh beginning for the same mind. Mystic will retain only S, the starting letter of his last name. To be used in the new life that will be created after this eldritch expedition. He didn’t ask for it but it will prove fruitful.

And what of the revelations?  A number of them are washed out, remaining only as fragments, yet others remain. Some to be extrapolated on in a journal of feverish focus. Others will creep in as nightmares, visions, and potentially his untimely end. Knowledge will stick, if weaker from the trauma. When mental fatigue and physical ache wanes somewhat, he will pursue secrets again.