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Ygabosh, The Devil's Bride: Part Two
- Ygabosh, The Devil's Bride: Part Two -
Queen Ygabariel of Viltharlia was happy to give herself over fully unto darkness. Unto the one that of old her people had called only by titles such as the Necromancer, or the Devil... unto me, such as I had been in those days, in that time countless generations before the fall of Atlantis, which was then called by the name of Atlan. On the occasion of our marriage, of our sealing ritual... she witnessed the bloody and gruesome sacrifice of all the people who had served her the most loyally and followed her over the waters of the ocean when she chose to abandon her homeland in order to come to this forsaken isle in order to retreat from the world following a vision she had of the great cataclysm that was to occur after the fall of Atlantis in the then-distant future. She craved darkness, knowing that the gods would never have understood her, never allowed her to truly be herself. She had always been an outsider! But now, here in this dark place far from the fair folk who had been her blood kindred... she had free reign to be as she wished, not as people expected her to be. Here, she could indulge all that was within her heart to indulge in... and there would be no restrictions to reign in her creativity any longer. The heads of those who once served her were laid at her feet, crowns of thorns placed on each one. The blood from them pooled like scarlet water, and the former goddess-queen removed her sandals in order to dip her toes in the blood, while giggling maniacally. She had not lost mind, merely her inhibitions! And this was a side of her that she had always kept hidden away. Now she was free to be herself... to please her husband, to please me. Yet I never asked anything of her except that she choose me of her own free will and not out of any sense of duty or obligation. She exceeded all of my expectations of how a proper queen should be, and ere long she became truly worthy of the title of goddess. And a dark goddess she became, much to my delight! The hearts of those sacrificed were burned in sacred braziers, with heady incense serving the purpose of sweetening the air and hiding the stench of death that would have otherwise permeated all of that dark, grotesque temple within the dark castle that dominated the isle that was now our home. As the closing act of the sealing ritual, a single goblet was given for my bride and I to drink out of... it contained the blood of those who had been sacrificed. We both partook of it, with Ygabariel drinking a great deal more of it than I... the lion's share, to be certain. When she was through, no blood was left in the cup to partake of. She was beautiful like an angel! With long wavy hair seemingly spun of gold, fair skin as white as a cloud yet not unhealthily pale... and eyes so blue they put the azure of the sky itself to shame. In her jet black wedding gown, diaphanous and flowing, she looked every bit the goddess that her people had believed her to be. A minor goddess, a demigoddess by their traditions... still beneath the other actual gods in terms of divinity. But now, she was coming into her own! A true goddess, in all of her terrible and wonderful splendor. I was wearing a black robe, myself, my true inhuman and quite alien appearance hidden beneath the physical guise of a member of my bride's race... the fair folk that some might call Elves. I was fair but not as fair as she... my own skin having more of a yellowish tint to it rather than being wholly the pure white that my bride's flesh was. My eyes were blue, but a grayer hue of that shade and so nowhere near as light and vibrant as her own were. My hair was long and that odd shade of platinum blonde that is almost white but not... and it was very straight, not wavy like she who was now and for the rest of our lives together, my queen. Yet though we were different in how we both looked, we were I realized in many ways the same beneath the guises we both wore. I wore mine in a more literal sense, and she wore hers in a less literal manner... hiding her true nature behind the guise of civilized, proper behavior of the sort favored by her peoples' nobility. Though her people had fallen into a decline that could not be halted... and they had within their hearts a madness brewing just beneath the surface... one which even now possessed my bride, body and soul. Our wedding night was passionate, intense, and fierce. With nothing held back by either of us, the scratches upon our bodies and other little marks to be noticed the following day, being mute testament to the shrieks, moans and cries that we had let loose the night previous... nothing held us back, and so we held nothing back. It felt good just to be!
It was the kind of lovemaking that bordered on rapacious defilement, and we reveled in it. The next day, my beloved queen donned a gown that was scarlet in color but of a similar design to the flowing, diaphanous wedding gown that she had so loved wearing previously. She ran into the bath chambers... where she remained for many hours. When she emerged at last, I saw what she had spent so long doing. She had made various horizontal slashes across the top of her nose, each perfect and symmetrical, and had made an arching cut over each of her eyes above her eyebrows, with arching cuts having been also made from next to the middle of her nose on both sides of her face down and around her cheeks, just ending before the bottoms of her ears. She had also given herself the tattoo of an eye in the middle of her forehead, in permanent black ink. As a final touch... she had filed all of her teeth to fanged points. “So, what do you think of how I look now, my love?” she asked me cheerfully, as if I were being shown a new garment she was fond of wearing, or some new jewelry she adored. “You are as beautiful to me as ever, my queen... my goddess!” I answered. Those marks would scar, and remain upon her face. She had wanted them to! For she was attempting to express what she really was in spirit, and make it show upon her physical body. And spiritually... she never had been of the fair folk. She was something other, something older, something darker. Yet did I love her, and continue to love her despite all her insanity. “Do you know what the most harmful thing is that people do?” she asked me one day, to which I thus offered: “Hurting one another.” but she shook her head and corrected me, stating: “No! Lying is what is the most harmful thing... the whole reason I did this to my face, is because I am through with lying. Not just to myself, but to the whole world! I want everyone to see my truth openly, for all that it truly is. But I also want everyone in our realm, on this isle, to realize that they do not need to hide anything anymore for anyone. I want everyone to be honest, so that we can take our freedom to the next level of all that it truly means to be free! We need not consider ourselves outcasts any longer... we are our own nation, as well as we are our own people, our own kindred. Let that be our truth, and let truth keep us ever free.” And so she proclaimed that lying was now a sin... not a crime, for that would have been too harsh. But a sin in the eyes of herself and I as the living god and goddess of the island. So devout were the peoples under our rule, that they ceased lying altogether... even white lies were done away with for fear of their immortal souls' eternal damnation. For nothing damns a person more, than a lie! That was her truth, and it was mine as well. Together, we imparted that truth unto others, and they unto still others... until soon, honesty became one of the noblest virtues of our folk. However, this brought great strife that neither of us had foreseen... for instead of telling polite lies to each other, people said outright what they thought of their neighbors. And sometimes, those thoughts were terrible things indeed! People did not stop at a simple act of honesty either... they began to do things out of honesty that they never would have even so much as dreamed of doing while under the guise of feigned civility. It began with mischief, and before long had branched out into violence and bloodshed as honesty became the motivation for all manner of evils that had not been known before. I was sickened by this, for it showed me a terrible thing! That no matter how civilized, kind-seeming, or innocent a people might seem to be... sometimes, they hide a lot of wickedness under the skin that, when the veil of civility is pulled suddenly aside, when all previously taught inhibitions are done away with, they may be prone to indulging in. Soon, every sort of barbaric and horrible act was given license, all in the name of a single mantra: “Be true to yourself and others!” A mantra that revealed either the best or the worst in each and every soul. “Now, truly, this island has become Hell!” the queen cried out with delight one day while we went out on a tour of our lands. It had devolved into a realm of absolute and utter insanity... the only law, the only order still being obeyed at the last being that all had to bow to the wishes of myself and my queen. To recount all of the horrible sights that met my eyes in that time, would be like writing a veritable catalog of horrors that would but make the reader to shudder at best and vomit at worst. I was no stranger to such sights, but even seeing what had become of my adopted home was too much for my heart to bear. It was beyond even any hell.
In one forest grove there was a mass orgy of unbridled savage lust, where bodies heaved and writhed like snakes all atop one another, in and out of one another, bodies slick with sweat. Sometimes covered in blood and other fluids as well. They did not make love... they mated like animals, worse than what it is that animals do even! There were rapes, sometimes enacted by brothers upon their sisters. Or sisters upon their brothers... sometimes, committed by parents upon their children. And I would order them to stop, order my guards and soldiers to stop them... but in doing so, they would complain that they were only giving license to the honest feelings they had in their hearts, alleging that in standing in the way of this we were limiting their freedom to be their truest selves. As we traveled across the isle, we had also witnessed acts of such shocking brutality that it seemed the cruelty knew no bounds of reason. I saw a man cutting off his own left hand with an sword he held in his right... and asked him why he did so. He told me that he did it because he had been unfaithful to his wife and touched another woman with that very same hand. Because that act was dishonest to her, he sought to punish himself for it by cutting off the offending appendage. All while his wife pleaded with him to stop, honestly telling him that she had already forgiven him for his transgression, and put it behind her. Evidently, he had not gotten over this so easily, and we were unable to prevent him from doing the bloody deed his mind was thus set upon. I witnessed a hanging in a tiny village where a man had pleaded with his neighbors to lynch him because he had in secret tortured someone's beloved pet cat to death. They hung him at his own insistence, his face smiling insanely as the rope that suspended him from the high branch of a tree strangled him unto his demise. There were executions of countless sorts being enacted, murders being committed, and as many crimes as there were forms of vigilante justice being employed to combat them. These were not the actions of a people merely trying to live more fully honest lives... something had done away with all measure of conscience that had held them back previously from giving into their darkest nature. It did not matter where we went, this was happening... and at the scene of each and every horror, my bride did stand there laughing hysterically, as if this was all some enormous jest that only she understood or saw the humor in. Something snapped in me as well, for like her I laughed... but I laughed when I meant to cry, and seemed to be losing all control of my own emotions in the face of so much insanity all around and all about me. Only our soldiers and guards seemed to be unaffected, for they acted as professional, as disciplined, as ever they had been taught to be. Things degenerated fast on that island.... when in the end, the workers refused to work because they had not been honest with themselves over secretly and in truth hating their jobs. Technologies were no longer attended, farms no longer tended... the roads and paths and trails stopped being kept up as people lived out their darkest and most twisted fantasies, all whilst allowing the real world to pass them by. It was like they were caught in a dream, a nightmare of a sort that help them captive, prevented them from living normal lives any longer. This was no longer a refuge for outsiders... it was an asylum for the insane, with no doctors to manage things. No hope left, for any of the inmates! Even Hell would have been more merciful, more orderly and proper than what that isle became due to my bride's twisted influence. Yet I loved her even in the face of all this, all that she had caused my people to become. I faced her with it upon our return to the castle, accused her right out with twisting the people into horrific shells of their former selves. But she said to me in defense: “I did no such thing, my love! No one made them do any of this... no law, no edict, no proclamation ever said they had to. They could have used honesty to seek forgiveness for past wicked deeds and sins... but they did not. They might have used such a chance to start over anew, to forgive and forget the past and create a brighter future for one another, one in which lies would not be needed. But they did not! Here was to be a test of their true character... and these people have all failed. They were always like this... but they pretended to be better than they were, put on invisible masks to hide the beasts they were all the time, the animals beneath the surface of their seeming intelligence. They are simply showing us the truth behind the former lies they told themselves, each other, and you. All I did... was reveal the truth!”
I had thought she had not foreseen all of this that happened, but it seemed she had, and that this was all an elaborate test of the peoples' moral character. “How did they lose their inhibitions?” I asked the queen, to which she explained that she had slipped something into the water supply... and that through the influence of whatever substance or chemical it had been, the people had lost their ability to inhibit any of their behavior any longer. “I am afraid, the effects are permanent, as well.” she added, to which I was forced to face her honesty as well. She was cold and cruel in the pursuit of her truth... and as surely as I loved her, that same love had made me blind to her own penchant for wickedness. So lonely had I been, that I had aligned myself to a woman more demonic than I was... I, whom many called the Devil. Apparently, only the people who lived at the castle were spared... for we had our own water supply that was unaffected by that utilized by the other inhabitants of our island home. I cautioned everyone at the castle to avoid going out, and to avoid drinking from any water supply outside the castle walls. I was on the morrow going to have to send out the soldiers to impose martial law upon the island, to force order to return... before things could go too much further, to the point where there might be no returning from what anarchic lunacy lay before us. She changed her name while all of this was going on! Now, she had begun to insist that I no longer call her Ygabariel... but that instead I call her Ygabosh, which was I was told the name of an ancient deity that embodied truth, but which also embodied madness. “We must put our masks aside now, my love! I, have seen your true form, during our sealing ritual... the form that lies just beneath the spells you use to mask it. Now, you are beginning to see mine!” she told me. But what she had seen was not my truest form, but merely a perceivable emanation of it that was able to be seen and understood by the physical and spiritual senses when they could be made to work together. All I did when I revealed that form of mine to people was reach into their minds for a moment and open for them their third eye, the eye of their spirit that allows all people and gods to see what lies beyond the material aspect of reality. This was not, the nature of the spells I used to sometimes change my appearance... nor the glamours I used to occasionally enhance how people saw me. It was something far simpler. It would never be possible for anyone to perceive the totality of all that I truly was... for no eye could see all of it and no mind could bear such a seeing and not be driven to insanity by attempting such a thing. Thus it was that I cautioned Queen Ygabosh: “As much as I love you, I would not wish upon you the terror of seeing what it is that I truly am... for what you beheld was merely what your mind could handle seeing. If honesty were truly allowed to be given free reign in all existence... you would lose your mind in the very moment that you beheld my actual spiritual being in all of its' alien glory.” and this seemed to jar something in the queen's mind. She grew frantic, became insistent, her hands shaking and her eyes so wide that she looked truly mad. “Show me!” she demanded. “Show me... and I will show you, what I truly am.” to which I told her with all due honestly: “I cannot, because I do honestly love you. In that love, I want to protect you from anything harmful... especially my truest form. That is why it is so very necessary sometimes that people hide certain things! It is not always just about truth or lies... it is about keeping things the way they should be, without all descending into anarchy or horror. It is about doing what is right, and not what is easy. Do you understand now, that all things must be in balance? You, in your attempt to reveal my peoples' true character... have robbed them of the ability to show it at all. For in tipping the balance and destroying it utterly, you have taken from them their freedom to choose. To choose not to indulge in their darkest fantasies or cruelest desires! That is what makes us who and what we are, and what separates us from the animals of the jungle... our ability to inhibit within ourselves the baser instincts that animals cannot help but indulge in. It is not lies that we tell each other like you think it is... it is our compassion for others that makes us long to protect them from the things that might hurt them or destroy them. You have removed their capacity to protect one another! This is no longer about truth... it is about freedom and how you have taken it away. All in the name of truth and freedom!” and that made her cry, and laugh, and both at the same time. Her face, was filling with unbearable sorrows.
“You, wished to see their true character... now, I shall reveal yours unto you, goddess Ygabosh. You have known so much hurt in life, so much pain due to lies you were told or forced to live... perhaps as told unto you by the other gods of long ago, in the ancient days beyond all memory. And as the physical reincarnation of the goddess you truly are, your own people also lied to you, perhaps even raising you in an environment where lies hurt you... and perhaps you saw the effect that outright deceit has on others. This tainted you, festered within you, until it drove you mad! And now, you cannot contain it anymore, and you wish to lash out because of the pain you are in. But it needs to stop, it needs to end both here... and now... before it consumes not just you, but all the world entire. If what happened on this isle were to spread to other lands, other nations, other peoples... the world could end, in madness and blood the likes of which would make your visions of the downfall of Atlan pale in comparison. But as I said... I love you, that is why I am trying to stop you before it is too late.” She fell to her knees before me, and her face was unreadable... lost in grief so deep, she could not form any meaningful words. “What... oh, what... have I done?” she asked me, but I also was at a loss for words. Outside of the castle walls, there was for the first time in the island's entire history, order being enforced at the point of a sword. The old water supplies would have to be emptied... fresh water would need to be brought to replace the old, and that would have to be taken from emergency cisterns in the island's underground. That would at least so ensure that the water could be safely sipped once again... but I saw no way to cure the people, if it was true that the effects of what had been done to them were permanent. Even if order could be restored by force for a time... what would happen when the soldiers and guards could no longer keep watch? How could they be everywhere, all at once! It was an impossible situation with no solution. I was furious at my bride, at my queen, at my goddess for having done such a thing... yet, I was bound to her by love, by vows, and by a ritual more sacred than any other. I could not find it in my heart to punish her, though if I were to be honest with myself at that time... I should have declared her actions to be criminal. But this was not about honesty any longer, it was about doing what was right... not what was easy. And so it was that all those who had, during the course of these horrific events committed any violent acts or crimes... I gave orders that they be rounded up and put to death in public, as an example to others who might be thinking of committing similar acts. Those who had suffered as victims all throughout, those same did I offer recompense both of a monetary sort to, and by way of offering to replace any property lost, any of their animals that were killed, and some time with the priests and priestesses to be counseled on how to move past their grief. The dead were buried or cremated, as per their families' or loved ones' desires and wishes... and thus was order restored. Those who had weathered this storm and despite losing all their inhibitions remained goodly people... were rewarded. Even as those who had evidently been wicked all along had been punished for their actions. I did not punish those who let lust go to their heads in cases where no rape or other violent actions were involved... for it was enough that they had to live with the knowledge of what they had done, though they be perhaps embarrassed by it in the future. Petty crimes such as theft, vandalism or other minor mischief were also handled without putting anyone to death. It was enough that they knew, that if they acted out of their compulsions again in the future... far, far more severe punishments awaited them. And having witnessed the public executions of the violent criminals, they knew better than to chance having such a fate befall them in turn. It was difficult returning a sense of normality to the island after this period in its' history... and, it was difficult for me to face the facts of things, that these were not an innocent people any longer. They had become, for a time, the very devils and demons that outsiders claimed they always had been! And I wondered if those same outsiders had not been somewhat prescient in labeling them thus as they had. Worse still... Ygabosh never recovered fully from her descent into madness. She stopped behaving insanely, but seemed now to be devoid of any and all emotion... and seemed unable to speak. I would beg, plead with her, to speak... for her voice was so beautiful, so lovely to hear! But she was silent, and made only the occasional sighing or giggle.
I had found a solution for putting an end to the chaos, and just to make sure things remained orderly I had each village on the island supplied with its' own local militia to act as a police force of sorts, and so thus make certain that any future crimes be punished swiftly. As well as to act as a deterrent against any crimes people might be contemplating. People were no longer to rule themselves... they, would have to be ruled by law. The same as every other civilized nation on the planet. Having seen what hid beneath the surface, what I would never have imagined possible otherwise... my eyes, were now opened to one truth that I had never envisioned previously: my people were flawed, imperfect, and just as capable of evil as any other. And I would have to love them, flaws and all, if I was to continue ruling over them in any meaningful manner. All that remained, was to decide how to help my queen to awaken from what torment it was that help her captive in her own body and so robbed her of speech and emotion. I spent all my days and nights with her, whilst thus assigning the governing of my island kingdom to a trusted council of the castle's top administrators. They kept things running and kept the peace, as I tried to see if I could reach whatever was left of the woman I had fallen so deeply in love with. I brought her many flowers in all of her favorite colors, had all of her favorite food and drinks prepared for her each and every meal. Minstrels were brought in to play her favorite songs and music for her. And through it all, I remained at her side, gazing into her vacant looking eyes and hoping for any sign of her old joy and her former mirth to return. Her last spoken words to me had been: “What... oh, what... have I done?” and I could not bear the sorrow of that. The sorrow that I remembered was in her voice when she spoke those words unto me. A part of me died when she ceased talking... and a part of me remained dead because of her refusal or inability to speak. I wanted to turn back time, to reach her somehow before she could do what she had done, to prevent the catastrophe that befell us all in the end. To remove the marks that did now permanently mar her otherwise perfectly beautiful face by preventing her from ever inflicting them upon herself, even though her tattoo looked nicely enough on her despite all of that. But time flowed on ever forward, and could not be turned back no matter how much it broke all our hearts to see what had become of us and our home. It was no wonder she had refused to go to the land of the gods when she so was given the chance to do so... all that time, this darkness was within her, and she knew it was there. It was something the gods would have noticed and probably destroyed her for. Or worse, wiped her mind and all of her memory in order to make her an obedient servant of their will! They had done such things to others in the past, after all. In contrast, I had no wish to impose anything on anyone... I merely had a desire to see people happy, to see them be their best selves and the best versions of themselves. At first, I had believed in what Ygabosh was doing... until the terrible truth of it all was revealed to me. I then realized what it was that had to be done! For it came to me one night like a flash of lightning might so illuminate the heavens. I needed to connect to her truest self, on a spiritual level, so that I might attempt to heal whatever ailed her within her soul, whatever it was that kept her withdrawn from the physical world to such a degree as it seemed she was. I had never attempted to do such a thing before, but now the only way would be to form a psychic bridge between our two minds... to allow our spirits to merge for a bit, to share the whole of each other with each other. The things that I was too frightened for her to see about my truest form, my deepest self! And all that she had been keeping from me. That would be laid bare and exposed before our conjoined selves... there would be, could be, no secrets in that moment to hold unto. No masks to wear, no illusions, no glamours, only our purest selves... touching as one... in an act beyond even the oneness that comes with lovemaking. This was called “divine union”, and it was something that the gods and goddesses did occasionally during acts of physical love between each other in order to create a deeper sense of oneness, love, and devotion thereby. It was something anyone, even mortals, were capable of... had they only known how to enter into this state. And so I was determined to attempt this, in the hope that it would do what all else I had done for my queen could not. I was willing to even give my very life to heal her, should the need arise! And now, after so long, the need was great.
She was asleep on the night when I decided it was so time to attempt her healing... within the state of dreaming, her spirit and soul would be freer than when awake, with her subconscious being a great deal more active. She lay upon the bed within our personal chambers, wearing a long flowing nightgown of the finest quality, forest green in color... her golden hair spread out behind her head as she lay with her eyes closed. She appeared quite peaceful, although I knew this was deceptive because she was held so fast in some sort of unfathomable trauma that only she fully understood the nature of. It had to be more than guilt, more than some sort of personal crisis! I intended to find out. I placed my palms gently upon her temples, massaging her head softly whilst I worked my will and concentrated on the unshackling of my own spirit and the soul that it contained... that I might join her in the realm of dreams. I had done a thing like this very infrequently over the countless centuries of my existence! To enter into someone's dreams is not something to be done lightly. Sometimes, I am called into them by others who invoke me. But to enter into another living soul's dreams forcefully... even to help them... was something I would always prefer to avoid doing had I any choice in the matter. It felt wrong, as if I were an invader in the most sacred of all personal spaces! And yet, on this occasion, I had no other choice. I felt my body thus becoming lighter, the world spinning about me as sleep fell upon me... as if I had not slept in so long a time, that it was impossible to remain awake any longer. This was how this power worked, and it had a terrible physical cost! I lay down on the bed next to Ygabosh so that I would not otherwise fall over. It was not possible to stop this now... and soon, the waking world grew dark and vanished as the realm of dreams took its' place. I half expected to have done this wrong, to have entered into my own dream, but such it seems was not the case because I so beheld things that I knew had never existed within even my most vivid subconscious imaginings, or my most active memories of the past. I saw various snippets of ancient histories playing out before me... from many worlds besides this one. I saw alien things of every kind, of every variety, and although I too had lived lives beyond counting on all manner of worlds and planets and myriad planes of existence since the hour of time's dawning... some quite alien indeed... it was even so, that the things I now beheld were of a sort that were like nothing in my experience. It was a tapestry of chaotic, random images and moments... but there was something in common within each and every scene playing out before my eyes. She was there, in all of them! In one form or another, as a man sometimes... as a woman sometimes. Occasionally revered as a god or goddess, sometimes reviled as a demon or an unspeakable monster... and I knew how that felt. I knew all too well! She was lonely, in her earliest of days... just as I had been in my own... and those she loved lied to her, deceived her. In the end, they left her even more alone then before. Broken in spirit, finding it difficult to trust others. I suffered from all of that as well in my time... and still suffer from that difficulty in trusting. I chose all my friends and loved ones carefully over the years... as did she. We were so much alike, so very much! Our dreams were beginning to merge, and our memories conjoin. I saw her, and she saw me... our eyes beholding our vaster cosmic forms that we had each attempted to hide from each other fearing it might each drive the other mad. “What are you doing here, my love?” she asked me, her voice like unto that of a great multitude all singing in perfect harmony. I replied in a voice that sounded similar but with a different vocal range: “I am here to bring you back, to help you talk and feel joy once again. To heal all that ails and afflicts you, if I can.” to which the thing that was the real Ygabosh... beautiful and terrible all at the same time, angelic and yet inhuman, alien and yet familiar... answered: “I am become sorrow, I am become pain, my beloved one. I have done terrible things because of having been hurt in so many lives, on so many worlds, in so many dimensions and planes of existence. I have become twisted, evil because of this! How can I redeem myself?” to which I told her, my voice emerging from the shadowy and fiery, yet beautiful and angelic thing that I actually was: “Am I any less twisted? Look at me, dear goddess! Three eyes upon my head, and countless other eyes all over my form. People say that angels and divine beings are beautiful things, but that is a lie. Our beauty... is not bound by human standards.”
I went on, explaining: “Some would call this ugly! Yet, you have found it beautiful, because of being who and what you are... my kindred, though we both knew it not until now. Your fire is different, it is like a soft golden light compared to my intense flame... and the shifting forms that it hangs about like an aura, I see what lies at the heart of them, the true you that is the order within the chaos of your being. You did not intend for the chaos that ensued on our island! You meant to reveal truth, and you did. Oh how you did! I had been blind to my peoples' capacity for wickedness and evil. I thought that they could continue to govern themselves, never realizing that they could barely even control themselves. You had opened my eyes, and shown me the necessity of rule by law, rather than rule by desire alone. Thanks to you, I have brought order to my people at last... something that in my childish thinking I never in all my imaginings would have realized was needed by them! No, we do not live in a paradise... but we can in time make one of it. You did well, my beloved goddess... forgive yourself, and come back to me fully. There is no need for redemption, but there is need for forgiveness.” And the chaos of her being parted, revealing a shape like unto a woman with many arms and eyes, all of those eyes crying tears of shadow. She was like a living star, like a sentient sun, only humanoid in form and not blinding in intensity. One could look upon her comfortably, and be happy to do so! Her hair was pure light, soft and golden. And out of the chaos of my being she beheld my actual self. A small child with many arms and eyes, made of light just like her... androgynous and smiling lovingly. I rushed into her arms, allowing myself to be as I truly was, as I had kept hidden from all others for so long. “Mommy... please come back to me. I cannot bear to be alone without the sound of your voice and how happy you used to be. Do not leave me all alone... do not leave me, ever!” She took me into her arms, her size that of an adult... whilst mine was that of a small child. She said to me sadly, her voice a tender and motherly one: “I never knew, my love... I never realized... but now it all makes so much perfect sense. The innocence that you hide from the world, replacing it with a false veil of darkness so that you will not get hurt so easily by others. You are no devil like they say! Just a child god, or goddess, that never had the chance or perhaps even the ability to fully grow up. I cannot imagine what must have traumatized you to thus make you this way! But I realize now... we are in so many ways, the same. And yet, different as night is to day... yet still we burn brightly in our spirits.” and I had awakened in her, her motherly instincts, which she had denied for so long, perhaps for the entirety of her lonely existence. She had a new purpose now, a new reason to exist like never before. She had to care for this child, for the child that I actually was, and which only she had been allowed to see in its' truest form. “Come home with me, mommy... let us leave this place to which you have retreated! I want to hear you talk, hear you sing and laugh again.” And she wanted to sing then and there, and laugh like never before. So she did! Her song a joyful one as she held me tight and protective in her arms... the cosmic streams of countless stars, nebulae and planets dancing about us in a dreamlike replica of the actual universe. No, the multiverse! For there were countless universes all about us just beyond our ability to see... yet, in this moment, the veil was parted as we saw them. Our hearts filled with ecstasy and something beyond happiness! Like no heaven ever imagined in the minds of men and women. The physical multiverse here had its' truest form, and we were not just witnessing it but had allowed ourselves for a time to become a part of it... a part of all that is. And I was not afraid... I was safe in her arms, in the arms of Mother Ygabosh, the primal protector. Her original self that she did allow herself to forget over time! But which now she remembered, and which awakened fully. We were in every heart and soul in that brief instant... in every rock and tree, every mountain, river, lake and in all the clouds of the sky and the fire in the earth. On every world in all of existence, and every parallel world in existences beyond! She showed me all of this, and I showed it to her at the same time. There is no name for what we entered into and became a part of... for it is all names, all things. After a time, we emerged from this state and realized we needed to awaken back in the physical world. And so we did! She opened her eyes, I opened mine, and she laughed sweetly. “Sweet child!” she said, in regarding me.
For a time... we had to get used to our physical bodies, once again. Ygabosh, looked at her face in the mirror and realized the extent of what she had done to herself and how irreversible it was... but she had realized she needed to accept it now and no longer despise herself for it. I put my arm around her and I said to her adoringly: “You look beautiful, mother.” For she was my mother now, as well as my love... and there was no going back from that, ever again. I was through with pretending to be all fully grown up, and at that point in that life I just wanted to be myself... and so I was. She was younger than I, but I had a health condition that was killing me and before the next two decades passed I would perish from it. There was no way to know back then... medicine as it is known today did not exist yet. Doctors as so are known today, did not exist yet! The ones that did, thought they could cure through magic or prayer. When my time came, I would die in the arms of Mother Ygabosh... who would go on to rule over that island alone, keeping herself faithful to my memory. But for that morning, the morning of her return to me from her self-imposed silence born of suffering... we were happy. We danced together, humming a tune we liked and singing words to it that we made up as we went along. I allowed her to govern all of the island after that... she was the adult, after all, and she ruled responsibly and well. We had no ties or dealings with the outside world, and the peace we won for our tiny kingdom remained firm for all the days of our lives. The fair folk never had been the goddess-queen's people, and now she realized more fully and more truly why and how that this was most definitely so! She stopped hating herself for being different, and accepted her otherness. After all, she had already accepted my own. Honesty can be the most difficult thing to accept, or to understand... too little of it and you have deception and lies. But too much of it, and you have chaos. We learned the value of balanced honesty on that dark, isolated island, and never again did we attempt to sway that balance too far in either direction. The emergency cisterns would be filled with fresh water once again, and things would proceed with a new normal and not just return to the normal that we had known before, which had been unacceptable. I decided to stop doing my old rituals in which I communed with the spirits of the dead... I had all the answers I ever sought as shown to me in the midst of my love's dreams combining with my own. In that instant in which we had become one with all that is! There was nothing left to learn, except how to be happiest. And we refined our happiness as if it were a magical form of silver or gold. Let them call me necromancer if they chose to... but on that day, the part of me that was darkest began to come back to the light once again. On the day when, one year after Ygabosh returned to me fully from my rescue of her in the realm of dreams... we celebrated the anniversary of her healing, with celebrations that were held all across our isle. I went to all of them, with my dearest mother and lover at my side... and both of us knew a boundless sense of true peace. She was now known to the people as the Divine Mother, with myself as her Divine Child... and in time whole mythologies would form around this understanding of the ones who ruled over them. We did not discourage this, for people need their stories in order to express themselves authentically, as people. Let them spin their tales, weave magic into every word, and delight their children around their campfires with the poetry that is inherent in such traditions. Every child could identify with the Divine Child, and every mother with the Divine Mother... and the story of how I went into my mother's dreams to rescue her was itself a romantic one, the stuff of fairy tales even though it was true and grounded in a reality beyond all rational comprehension. Long after my passing, long after the time of Ygabosh came to its' own end with her passing... the Children of the Fallen, our people, would still be telling those old stories around new campfires. They wound by then move beyond the island they had lived in isolation on for so long, but they would bring their myths and legends with them, wherein our memory would be able to endure eternally. That is the most true way in which gods and goddesses are immortal, after all! And one person's Devil, can be another person's God or Goddess... for there is a core of light hidden in the folds of every single shadow, and a shadow cast by each and every light. With each of us who live and exist, being far more than our outermost physical appearances may lead one to deceptively believe.
Queen Ygabariel of Viltharlia was happy to give herself over fully unto darkness. Unto the one that of old her people had called only by titles such as the Necromancer, or the Devil... unto me, such as I had been in those days, in that time countless generations before the fall of Atlantis, which was then called by the name of Atlan. On the occasion of our marriage, of our sealing ritual... she witnessed the bloody and gruesome sacrifice of all the people who had served her the most loyally and followed her over the waters of the ocean when she chose to abandon her homeland in order to come to this forsaken isle in order to retreat from the world following a vision she had of the great cataclysm that was to occur after the fall of Atlantis in the then-distant future. She craved darkness, knowing that the gods would never have understood her, never allowed her to truly be herself. She had always been an outsider! But now, here in this dark place far from the fair folk who had been her blood kindred... she had free reign to be as she wished, not as people expected her to be. Here, she could indulge all that was within her heart to indulge in... and there would be no restrictions to reign in her creativity any longer. The heads of those who once served her were laid at her feet, crowns of thorns placed on each one. The blood from them pooled like scarlet water, and the former goddess-queen removed her sandals in order to dip her toes in the blood, while giggling maniacally. She had not lost mind, merely her inhibitions! And this was a side of her that she had always kept hidden away. Now she was free to be herself... to please her husband, to please me. Yet I never asked anything of her except that she choose me of her own free will and not out of any sense of duty or obligation. She exceeded all of my expectations of how a proper queen should be, and ere long she became truly worthy of the title of goddess. And a dark goddess she became, much to my delight! The hearts of those sacrificed were burned in sacred braziers, with heady incense serving the purpose of sweetening the air and hiding the stench of death that would have otherwise permeated all of that dark, grotesque temple within the dark castle that dominated the isle that was now our home. As the closing act of the sealing ritual, a single goblet was given for my bride and I to drink out of... it contained the blood of those who had been sacrificed. We both partook of it, with Ygabariel drinking a great deal more of it than I... the lion's share, to be certain. When she was through, no blood was left in the cup to partake of. She was beautiful like an angel! With long wavy hair seemingly spun of gold, fair skin as white as a cloud yet not unhealthily pale... and eyes so blue they put the azure of the sky itself to shame. In her jet black wedding gown, diaphanous and flowing, she looked every bit the goddess that her people had believed her to be. A minor goddess, a demigoddess by their traditions... still beneath the other actual gods in terms of divinity. But now, she was coming into her own! A true goddess, in all of her terrible and wonderful splendor. I was wearing a black robe, myself, my true inhuman and quite alien appearance hidden beneath the physical guise of a member of my bride's race... the fair folk that some might call Elves. I was fair but not as fair as she... my own skin having more of a yellowish tint to it rather than being wholly the pure white that my bride's flesh was. My eyes were blue, but a grayer hue of that shade and so nowhere near as light and vibrant as her own were. My hair was long and that odd shade of platinum blonde that is almost white but not... and it was very straight, not wavy like she who was now and for the rest of our lives together, my queen. Yet though we were different in how we both looked, we were I realized in many ways the same beneath the guises we both wore. I wore mine in a more literal sense, and she wore hers in a less literal manner... hiding her true nature behind the guise of civilized, proper behavior of the sort favored by her peoples' nobility. Though her people had fallen into a decline that could not be halted... and they had within their hearts a madness brewing just beneath the surface... one which even now possessed my bride, body and soul. Our wedding night was passionate, intense, and fierce. With nothing held back by either of us, the scratches upon our bodies and other little marks to be noticed the following day, being mute testament to the shrieks, moans and cries that we had let loose the night previous... nothing held us back, and so we held nothing back. It felt good just to be!
It was the kind of lovemaking that bordered on rapacious defilement, and we reveled in it. The next day, my beloved queen donned a gown that was scarlet in color but of a similar design to the flowing, diaphanous wedding gown that she had so loved wearing previously. She ran into the bath chambers... where she remained for many hours. When she emerged at last, I saw what she had spent so long doing. She had made various horizontal slashes across the top of her nose, each perfect and symmetrical, and had made an arching cut over each of her eyes above her eyebrows, with arching cuts having been also made from next to the middle of her nose on both sides of her face down and around her cheeks, just ending before the bottoms of her ears. She had also given herself the tattoo of an eye in the middle of her forehead, in permanent black ink. As a final touch... she had filed all of her teeth to fanged points. “So, what do you think of how I look now, my love?” she asked me cheerfully, as if I were being shown a new garment she was fond of wearing, or some new jewelry she adored. “You are as beautiful to me as ever, my queen... my goddess!” I answered. Those marks would scar, and remain upon her face. She had wanted them to! For she was attempting to express what she really was in spirit, and make it show upon her physical body. And spiritually... she never had been of the fair folk. She was something other, something older, something darker. Yet did I love her, and continue to love her despite all her insanity. “Do you know what the most harmful thing is that people do?” she asked me one day, to which I thus offered: “Hurting one another.” but she shook her head and corrected me, stating: “No! Lying is what is the most harmful thing... the whole reason I did this to my face, is because I am through with lying. Not just to myself, but to the whole world! I want everyone to see my truth openly, for all that it truly is. But I also want everyone in our realm, on this isle, to realize that they do not need to hide anything anymore for anyone. I want everyone to be honest, so that we can take our freedom to the next level of all that it truly means to be free! We need not consider ourselves outcasts any longer... we are our own nation, as well as we are our own people, our own kindred. Let that be our truth, and let truth keep us ever free.” And so she proclaimed that lying was now a sin... not a crime, for that would have been too harsh. But a sin in the eyes of herself and I as the living god and goddess of the island. So devout were the peoples under our rule, that they ceased lying altogether... even white lies were done away with for fear of their immortal souls' eternal damnation. For nothing damns a person more, than a lie! That was her truth, and it was mine as well. Together, we imparted that truth unto others, and they unto still others... until soon, honesty became one of the noblest virtues of our folk. However, this brought great strife that neither of us had foreseen... for instead of telling polite lies to each other, people said outright what they thought of their neighbors. And sometimes, those thoughts were terrible things indeed! People did not stop at a simple act of honesty either... they began to do things out of honesty that they never would have even so much as dreamed of doing while under the guise of feigned civility. It began with mischief, and before long had branched out into violence and bloodshed as honesty became the motivation for all manner of evils that had not been known before. I was sickened by this, for it showed me a terrible thing! That no matter how civilized, kind-seeming, or innocent a people might seem to be... sometimes, they hide a lot of wickedness under the skin that, when the veil of civility is pulled suddenly aside, when all previously taught inhibitions are done away with, they may be prone to indulging in. Soon, every sort of barbaric and horrible act was given license, all in the name of a single mantra: “Be true to yourself and others!” A mantra that revealed either the best or the worst in each and every soul. “Now, truly, this island has become Hell!” the queen cried out with delight one day while we went out on a tour of our lands. It had devolved into a realm of absolute and utter insanity... the only law, the only order still being obeyed at the last being that all had to bow to the wishes of myself and my queen. To recount all of the horrible sights that met my eyes in that time, would be like writing a veritable catalog of horrors that would but make the reader to shudder at best and vomit at worst. I was no stranger to such sights, but even seeing what had become of my adopted home was too much for my heart to bear. It was beyond even any hell.
In one forest grove there was a mass orgy of unbridled savage lust, where bodies heaved and writhed like snakes all atop one another, in and out of one another, bodies slick with sweat. Sometimes covered in blood and other fluids as well. They did not make love... they mated like animals, worse than what it is that animals do even! There were rapes, sometimes enacted by brothers upon their sisters. Or sisters upon their brothers... sometimes, committed by parents upon their children. And I would order them to stop, order my guards and soldiers to stop them... but in doing so, they would complain that they were only giving license to the honest feelings they had in their hearts, alleging that in standing in the way of this we were limiting their freedom to be their truest selves. As we traveled across the isle, we had also witnessed acts of such shocking brutality that it seemed the cruelty knew no bounds of reason. I saw a man cutting off his own left hand with an sword he held in his right... and asked him why he did so. He told me that he did it because he had been unfaithful to his wife and touched another woman with that very same hand. Because that act was dishonest to her, he sought to punish himself for it by cutting off the offending appendage. All while his wife pleaded with him to stop, honestly telling him that she had already forgiven him for his transgression, and put it behind her. Evidently, he had not gotten over this so easily, and we were unable to prevent him from doing the bloody deed his mind was thus set upon. I witnessed a hanging in a tiny village where a man had pleaded with his neighbors to lynch him because he had in secret tortured someone's beloved pet cat to death. They hung him at his own insistence, his face smiling insanely as the rope that suspended him from the high branch of a tree strangled him unto his demise. There were executions of countless sorts being enacted, murders being committed, and as many crimes as there were forms of vigilante justice being employed to combat them. These were not the actions of a people merely trying to live more fully honest lives... something had done away with all measure of conscience that had held them back previously from giving into their darkest nature. It did not matter where we went, this was happening... and at the scene of each and every horror, my bride did stand there laughing hysterically, as if this was all some enormous jest that only she understood or saw the humor in. Something snapped in me as well, for like her I laughed... but I laughed when I meant to cry, and seemed to be losing all control of my own emotions in the face of so much insanity all around and all about me. Only our soldiers and guards seemed to be unaffected, for they acted as professional, as disciplined, as ever they had been taught to be. Things degenerated fast on that island.... when in the end, the workers refused to work because they had not been honest with themselves over secretly and in truth hating their jobs. Technologies were no longer attended, farms no longer tended... the roads and paths and trails stopped being kept up as people lived out their darkest and most twisted fantasies, all whilst allowing the real world to pass them by. It was like they were caught in a dream, a nightmare of a sort that help them captive, prevented them from living normal lives any longer. This was no longer a refuge for outsiders... it was an asylum for the insane, with no doctors to manage things. No hope left, for any of the inmates! Even Hell would have been more merciful, more orderly and proper than what that isle became due to my bride's twisted influence. Yet I loved her even in the face of all this, all that she had caused my people to become. I faced her with it upon our return to the castle, accused her right out with twisting the people into horrific shells of their former selves. But she said to me in defense: “I did no such thing, my love! No one made them do any of this... no law, no edict, no proclamation ever said they had to. They could have used honesty to seek forgiveness for past wicked deeds and sins... but they did not. They might have used such a chance to start over anew, to forgive and forget the past and create a brighter future for one another, one in which lies would not be needed. But they did not! Here was to be a test of their true character... and these people have all failed. They were always like this... but they pretended to be better than they were, put on invisible masks to hide the beasts they were all the time, the animals beneath the surface of their seeming intelligence. They are simply showing us the truth behind the former lies they told themselves, each other, and you. All I did... was reveal the truth!”
I had thought she had not foreseen all of this that happened, but it seemed she had, and that this was all an elaborate test of the peoples' moral character. “How did they lose their inhibitions?” I asked the queen, to which she explained that she had slipped something into the water supply... and that through the influence of whatever substance or chemical it had been, the people had lost their ability to inhibit any of their behavior any longer. “I am afraid, the effects are permanent, as well.” she added, to which I was forced to face her honesty as well. She was cold and cruel in the pursuit of her truth... and as surely as I loved her, that same love had made me blind to her own penchant for wickedness. So lonely had I been, that I had aligned myself to a woman more demonic than I was... I, whom many called the Devil. Apparently, only the people who lived at the castle were spared... for we had our own water supply that was unaffected by that utilized by the other inhabitants of our island home. I cautioned everyone at the castle to avoid going out, and to avoid drinking from any water supply outside the castle walls. I was on the morrow going to have to send out the soldiers to impose martial law upon the island, to force order to return... before things could go too much further, to the point where there might be no returning from what anarchic lunacy lay before us. She changed her name while all of this was going on! Now, she had begun to insist that I no longer call her Ygabariel... but that instead I call her Ygabosh, which was I was told the name of an ancient deity that embodied truth, but which also embodied madness. “We must put our masks aside now, my love! I, have seen your true form, during our sealing ritual... the form that lies just beneath the spells you use to mask it. Now, you are beginning to see mine!” she told me. But what she had seen was not my truest form, but merely a perceivable emanation of it that was able to be seen and understood by the physical and spiritual senses when they could be made to work together. All I did when I revealed that form of mine to people was reach into their minds for a moment and open for them their third eye, the eye of their spirit that allows all people and gods to see what lies beyond the material aspect of reality. This was not, the nature of the spells I used to sometimes change my appearance... nor the glamours I used to occasionally enhance how people saw me. It was something far simpler. It would never be possible for anyone to perceive the totality of all that I truly was... for no eye could see all of it and no mind could bear such a seeing and not be driven to insanity by attempting such a thing. Thus it was that I cautioned Queen Ygabosh: “As much as I love you, I would not wish upon you the terror of seeing what it is that I truly am... for what you beheld was merely what your mind could handle seeing. If honesty were truly allowed to be given free reign in all existence... you would lose your mind in the very moment that you beheld my actual spiritual being in all of its' alien glory.” and this seemed to jar something in the queen's mind. She grew frantic, became insistent, her hands shaking and her eyes so wide that she looked truly mad. “Show me!” she demanded. “Show me... and I will show you, what I truly am.” to which I told her with all due honestly: “I cannot, because I do honestly love you. In that love, I want to protect you from anything harmful... especially my truest form. That is why it is so very necessary sometimes that people hide certain things! It is not always just about truth or lies... it is about keeping things the way they should be, without all descending into anarchy or horror. It is about doing what is right, and not what is easy. Do you understand now, that all things must be in balance? You, in your attempt to reveal my peoples' true character... have robbed them of the ability to show it at all. For in tipping the balance and destroying it utterly, you have taken from them their freedom to choose. To choose not to indulge in their darkest fantasies or cruelest desires! That is what makes us who and what we are, and what separates us from the animals of the jungle... our ability to inhibit within ourselves the baser instincts that animals cannot help but indulge in. It is not lies that we tell each other like you think it is... it is our compassion for others that makes us long to protect them from the things that might hurt them or destroy them. You have removed their capacity to protect one another! This is no longer about truth... it is about freedom and how you have taken it away. All in the name of truth and freedom!” and that made her cry, and laugh, and both at the same time. Her face, was filling with unbearable sorrows.
“You, wished to see their true character... now, I shall reveal yours unto you, goddess Ygabosh. You have known so much hurt in life, so much pain due to lies you were told or forced to live... perhaps as told unto you by the other gods of long ago, in the ancient days beyond all memory. And as the physical reincarnation of the goddess you truly are, your own people also lied to you, perhaps even raising you in an environment where lies hurt you... and perhaps you saw the effect that outright deceit has on others. This tainted you, festered within you, until it drove you mad! And now, you cannot contain it anymore, and you wish to lash out because of the pain you are in. But it needs to stop, it needs to end both here... and now... before it consumes not just you, but all the world entire. If what happened on this isle were to spread to other lands, other nations, other peoples... the world could end, in madness and blood the likes of which would make your visions of the downfall of Atlan pale in comparison. But as I said... I love you, that is why I am trying to stop you before it is too late.” She fell to her knees before me, and her face was unreadable... lost in grief so deep, she could not form any meaningful words. “What... oh, what... have I done?” she asked me, but I also was at a loss for words. Outside of the castle walls, there was for the first time in the island's entire history, order being enforced at the point of a sword. The old water supplies would have to be emptied... fresh water would need to be brought to replace the old, and that would have to be taken from emergency cisterns in the island's underground. That would at least so ensure that the water could be safely sipped once again... but I saw no way to cure the people, if it was true that the effects of what had been done to them were permanent. Even if order could be restored by force for a time... what would happen when the soldiers and guards could no longer keep watch? How could they be everywhere, all at once! It was an impossible situation with no solution. I was furious at my bride, at my queen, at my goddess for having done such a thing... yet, I was bound to her by love, by vows, and by a ritual more sacred than any other. I could not find it in my heart to punish her, though if I were to be honest with myself at that time... I should have declared her actions to be criminal. But this was not about honesty any longer, it was about doing what was right... not what was easy. And so it was that all those who had, during the course of these horrific events committed any violent acts or crimes... I gave orders that they be rounded up and put to death in public, as an example to others who might be thinking of committing similar acts. Those who had suffered as victims all throughout, those same did I offer recompense both of a monetary sort to, and by way of offering to replace any property lost, any of their animals that were killed, and some time with the priests and priestesses to be counseled on how to move past their grief. The dead were buried or cremated, as per their families' or loved ones' desires and wishes... and thus was order restored. Those who had weathered this storm and despite losing all their inhibitions remained goodly people... were rewarded. Even as those who had evidently been wicked all along had been punished for their actions. I did not punish those who let lust go to their heads in cases where no rape or other violent actions were involved... for it was enough that they had to live with the knowledge of what they had done, though they be perhaps embarrassed by it in the future. Petty crimes such as theft, vandalism or other minor mischief were also handled without putting anyone to death. It was enough that they knew, that if they acted out of their compulsions again in the future... far, far more severe punishments awaited them. And having witnessed the public executions of the violent criminals, they knew better than to chance having such a fate befall them in turn. It was difficult returning a sense of normality to the island after this period in its' history... and, it was difficult for me to face the facts of things, that these were not an innocent people any longer. They had become, for a time, the very devils and demons that outsiders claimed they always had been! And I wondered if those same outsiders had not been somewhat prescient in labeling them thus as they had. Worse still... Ygabosh never recovered fully from her descent into madness. She stopped behaving insanely, but seemed now to be devoid of any and all emotion... and seemed unable to speak. I would beg, plead with her, to speak... for her voice was so beautiful, so lovely to hear! But she was silent, and made only the occasional sighing or giggle.
I had found a solution for putting an end to the chaos, and just to make sure things remained orderly I had each village on the island supplied with its' own local militia to act as a police force of sorts, and so thus make certain that any future crimes be punished swiftly. As well as to act as a deterrent against any crimes people might be contemplating. People were no longer to rule themselves... they, would have to be ruled by law. The same as every other civilized nation on the planet. Having seen what hid beneath the surface, what I would never have imagined possible otherwise... my eyes, were now opened to one truth that I had never envisioned previously: my people were flawed, imperfect, and just as capable of evil as any other. And I would have to love them, flaws and all, if I was to continue ruling over them in any meaningful manner. All that remained, was to decide how to help my queen to awaken from what torment it was that help her captive in her own body and so robbed her of speech and emotion. I spent all my days and nights with her, whilst thus assigning the governing of my island kingdom to a trusted council of the castle's top administrators. They kept things running and kept the peace, as I tried to see if I could reach whatever was left of the woman I had fallen so deeply in love with. I brought her many flowers in all of her favorite colors, had all of her favorite food and drinks prepared for her each and every meal. Minstrels were brought in to play her favorite songs and music for her. And through it all, I remained at her side, gazing into her vacant looking eyes and hoping for any sign of her old joy and her former mirth to return. Her last spoken words to me had been: “What... oh, what... have I done?” and I could not bear the sorrow of that. The sorrow that I remembered was in her voice when she spoke those words unto me. A part of me died when she ceased talking... and a part of me remained dead because of her refusal or inability to speak. I wanted to turn back time, to reach her somehow before she could do what she had done, to prevent the catastrophe that befell us all in the end. To remove the marks that did now permanently mar her otherwise perfectly beautiful face by preventing her from ever inflicting them upon herself, even though her tattoo looked nicely enough on her despite all of that. But time flowed on ever forward, and could not be turned back no matter how much it broke all our hearts to see what had become of us and our home. It was no wonder she had refused to go to the land of the gods when she so was given the chance to do so... all that time, this darkness was within her, and she knew it was there. It was something the gods would have noticed and probably destroyed her for. Or worse, wiped her mind and all of her memory in order to make her an obedient servant of their will! They had done such things to others in the past, after all. In contrast, I had no wish to impose anything on anyone... I merely had a desire to see people happy, to see them be their best selves and the best versions of themselves. At first, I had believed in what Ygabosh was doing... until the terrible truth of it all was revealed to me. I then realized what it was that had to be done! For it came to me one night like a flash of lightning might so illuminate the heavens. I needed to connect to her truest self, on a spiritual level, so that I might attempt to heal whatever ailed her within her soul, whatever it was that kept her withdrawn from the physical world to such a degree as it seemed she was. I had never attempted to do such a thing before, but now the only way would be to form a psychic bridge between our two minds... to allow our spirits to merge for a bit, to share the whole of each other with each other. The things that I was too frightened for her to see about my truest form, my deepest self! And all that she had been keeping from me. That would be laid bare and exposed before our conjoined selves... there would be, could be, no secrets in that moment to hold unto. No masks to wear, no illusions, no glamours, only our purest selves... touching as one... in an act beyond even the oneness that comes with lovemaking. This was called “divine union”, and it was something that the gods and goddesses did occasionally during acts of physical love between each other in order to create a deeper sense of oneness, love, and devotion thereby. It was something anyone, even mortals, were capable of... had they only known how to enter into this state. And so I was determined to attempt this, in the hope that it would do what all else I had done for my queen could not. I was willing to even give my very life to heal her, should the need arise! And now, after so long, the need was great.
She was asleep on the night when I decided it was so time to attempt her healing... within the state of dreaming, her spirit and soul would be freer than when awake, with her subconscious being a great deal more active. She lay upon the bed within our personal chambers, wearing a long flowing nightgown of the finest quality, forest green in color... her golden hair spread out behind her head as she lay with her eyes closed. She appeared quite peaceful, although I knew this was deceptive because she was held so fast in some sort of unfathomable trauma that only she fully understood the nature of. It had to be more than guilt, more than some sort of personal crisis! I intended to find out. I placed my palms gently upon her temples, massaging her head softly whilst I worked my will and concentrated on the unshackling of my own spirit and the soul that it contained... that I might join her in the realm of dreams. I had done a thing like this very infrequently over the countless centuries of my existence! To enter into someone's dreams is not something to be done lightly. Sometimes, I am called into them by others who invoke me. But to enter into another living soul's dreams forcefully... even to help them... was something I would always prefer to avoid doing had I any choice in the matter. It felt wrong, as if I were an invader in the most sacred of all personal spaces! And yet, on this occasion, I had no other choice. I felt my body thus becoming lighter, the world spinning about me as sleep fell upon me... as if I had not slept in so long a time, that it was impossible to remain awake any longer. This was how this power worked, and it had a terrible physical cost! I lay down on the bed next to Ygabosh so that I would not otherwise fall over. It was not possible to stop this now... and soon, the waking world grew dark and vanished as the realm of dreams took its' place. I half expected to have done this wrong, to have entered into my own dream, but such it seems was not the case because I so beheld things that I knew had never existed within even my most vivid subconscious imaginings, or my most active memories of the past. I saw various snippets of ancient histories playing out before me... from many worlds besides this one. I saw alien things of every kind, of every variety, and although I too had lived lives beyond counting on all manner of worlds and planets and myriad planes of existence since the hour of time's dawning... some quite alien indeed... it was even so, that the things I now beheld were of a sort that were like nothing in my experience. It was a tapestry of chaotic, random images and moments... but there was something in common within each and every scene playing out before my eyes. She was there, in all of them! In one form or another, as a man sometimes... as a woman sometimes. Occasionally revered as a god or goddess, sometimes reviled as a demon or an unspeakable monster... and I knew how that felt. I knew all too well! She was lonely, in her earliest of days... just as I had been in my own... and those she loved lied to her, deceived her. In the end, they left her even more alone then before. Broken in spirit, finding it difficult to trust others. I suffered from all of that as well in my time... and still suffer from that difficulty in trusting. I chose all my friends and loved ones carefully over the years... as did she. We were so much alike, so very much! Our dreams were beginning to merge, and our memories conjoin. I saw her, and she saw me... our eyes beholding our vaster cosmic forms that we had each attempted to hide from each other fearing it might each drive the other mad. “What are you doing here, my love?” she asked me, her voice like unto that of a great multitude all singing in perfect harmony. I replied in a voice that sounded similar but with a different vocal range: “I am here to bring you back, to help you talk and feel joy once again. To heal all that ails and afflicts you, if I can.” to which the thing that was the real Ygabosh... beautiful and terrible all at the same time, angelic and yet inhuman, alien and yet familiar... answered: “I am become sorrow, I am become pain, my beloved one. I have done terrible things because of having been hurt in so many lives, on so many worlds, in so many dimensions and planes of existence. I have become twisted, evil because of this! How can I redeem myself?” to which I told her, my voice emerging from the shadowy and fiery, yet beautiful and angelic thing that I actually was: “Am I any less twisted? Look at me, dear goddess! Three eyes upon my head, and countless other eyes all over my form. People say that angels and divine beings are beautiful things, but that is a lie. Our beauty... is not bound by human standards.”
I went on, explaining: “Some would call this ugly! Yet, you have found it beautiful, because of being who and what you are... my kindred, though we both knew it not until now. Your fire is different, it is like a soft golden light compared to my intense flame... and the shifting forms that it hangs about like an aura, I see what lies at the heart of them, the true you that is the order within the chaos of your being. You did not intend for the chaos that ensued on our island! You meant to reveal truth, and you did. Oh how you did! I had been blind to my peoples' capacity for wickedness and evil. I thought that they could continue to govern themselves, never realizing that they could barely even control themselves. You had opened my eyes, and shown me the necessity of rule by law, rather than rule by desire alone. Thanks to you, I have brought order to my people at last... something that in my childish thinking I never in all my imaginings would have realized was needed by them! No, we do not live in a paradise... but we can in time make one of it. You did well, my beloved goddess... forgive yourself, and come back to me fully. There is no need for redemption, but there is need for forgiveness.” And the chaos of her being parted, revealing a shape like unto a woman with many arms and eyes, all of those eyes crying tears of shadow. She was like a living star, like a sentient sun, only humanoid in form and not blinding in intensity. One could look upon her comfortably, and be happy to do so! Her hair was pure light, soft and golden. And out of the chaos of my being she beheld my actual self. A small child with many arms and eyes, made of light just like her... androgynous and smiling lovingly. I rushed into her arms, allowing myself to be as I truly was, as I had kept hidden from all others for so long. “Mommy... please come back to me. I cannot bear to be alone without the sound of your voice and how happy you used to be. Do not leave me all alone... do not leave me, ever!” She took me into her arms, her size that of an adult... whilst mine was that of a small child. She said to me sadly, her voice a tender and motherly one: “I never knew, my love... I never realized... but now it all makes so much perfect sense. The innocence that you hide from the world, replacing it with a false veil of darkness so that you will not get hurt so easily by others. You are no devil like they say! Just a child god, or goddess, that never had the chance or perhaps even the ability to fully grow up. I cannot imagine what must have traumatized you to thus make you this way! But I realize now... we are in so many ways, the same. And yet, different as night is to day... yet still we burn brightly in our spirits.” and I had awakened in her, her motherly instincts, which she had denied for so long, perhaps for the entirety of her lonely existence. She had a new purpose now, a new reason to exist like never before. She had to care for this child, for the child that I actually was, and which only she had been allowed to see in its' truest form. “Come home with me, mommy... let us leave this place to which you have retreated! I want to hear you talk, hear you sing and laugh again.” And she wanted to sing then and there, and laugh like never before. So she did! Her song a joyful one as she held me tight and protective in her arms... the cosmic streams of countless stars, nebulae and planets dancing about us in a dreamlike replica of the actual universe. No, the multiverse! For there were countless universes all about us just beyond our ability to see... yet, in this moment, the veil was parted as we saw them. Our hearts filled with ecstasy and something beyond happiness! Like no heaven ever imagined in the minds of men and women. The physical multiverse here had its' truest form, and we were not just witnessing it but had allowed ourselves for a time to become a part of it... a part of all that is. And I was not afraid... I was safe in her arms, in the arms of Mother Ygabosh, the primal protector. Her original self that she did allow herself to forget over time! But which now she remembered, and which awakened fully. We were in every heart and soul in that brief instant... in every rock and tree, every mountain, river, lake and in all the clouds of the sky and the fire in the earth. On every world in all of existence, and every parallel world in existences beyond! She showed me all of this, and I showed it to her at the same time. There is no name for what we entered into and became a part of... for it is all names, all things. After a time, we emerged from this state and realized we needed to awaken back in the physical world. And so we did! She opened her eyes, I opened mine, and she laughed sweetly. “Sweet child!” she said, in regarding me.
For a time... we had to get used to our physical bodies, once again. Ygabosh, looked at her face in the mirror and realized the extent of what she had done to herself and how irreversible it was... but she had realized she needed to accept it now and no longer despise herself for it. I put my arm around her and I said to her adoringly: “You look beautiful, mother.” For she was my mother now, as well as my love... and there was no going back from that, ever again. I was through with pretending to be all fully grown up, and at that point in that life I just wanted to be myself... and so I was. She was younger than I, but I had a health condition that was killing me and before the next two decades passed I would perish from it. There was no way to know back then... medicine as it is known today did not exist yet. Doctors as so are known today, did not exist yet! The ones that did, thought they could cure through magic or prayer. When my time came, I would die in the arms of Mother Ygabosh... who would go on to rule over that island alone, keeping herself faithful to my memory. But for that morning, the morning of her return to me from her self-imposed silence born of suffering... we were happy. We danced together, humming a tune we liked and singing words to it that we made up as we went along. I allowed her to govern all of the island after that... she was the adult, after all, and she ruled responsibly and well. We had no ties or dealings with the outside world, and the peace we won for our tiny kingdom remained firm for all the days of our lives. The fair folk never had been the goddess-queen's people, and now she realized more fully and more truly why and how that this was most definitely so! She stopped hating herself for being different, and accepted her otherness. After all, she had already accepted my own. Honesty can be the most difficult thing to accept, or to understand... too little of it and you have deception and lies. But too much of it, and you have chaos. We learned the value of balanced honesty on that dark, isolated island, and never again did we attempt to sway that balance too far in either direction. The emergency cisterns would be filled with fresh water once again, and things would proceed with a new normal and not just return to the normal that we had known before, which had been unacceptable. I decided to stop doing my old rituals in which I communed with the spirits of the dead... I had all the answers I ever sought as shown to me in the midst of my love's dreams combining with my own. In that instant in which we had become one with all that is! There was nothing left to learn, except how to be happiest. And we refined our happiness as if it were a magical form of silver or gold. Let them call me necromancer if they chose to... but on that day, the part of me that was darkest began to come back to the light once again. On the day when, one year after Ygabosh returned to me fully from my rescue of her in the realm of dreams... we celebrated the anniversary of her healing, with celebrations that were held all across our isle. I went to all of them, with my dearest mother and lover at my side... and both of us knew a boundless sense of true peace. She was now known to the people as the Divine Mother, with myself as her Divine Child... and in time whole mythologies would form around this understanding of the ones who ruled over them. We did not discourage this, for people need their stories in order to express themselves authentically, as people. Let them spin their tales, weave magic into every word, and delight their children around their campfires with the poetry that is inherent in such traditions. Every child could identify with the Divine Child, and every mother with the Divine Mother... and the story of how I went into my mother's dreams to rescue her was itself a romantic one, the stuff of fairy tales even though it was true and grounded in a reality beyond all rational comprehension. Long after my passing, long after the time of Ygabosh came to its' own end with her passing... the Children of the Fallen, our people, would still be telling those old stories around new campfires. They wound by then move beyond the island they had lived in isolation on for so long, but they would bring their myths and legends with them, wherein our memory would be able to endure eternally. That is the most true way in which gods and goddesses are immortal, after all! And one person's Devil, can be another person's God or Goddess... for there is a core of light hidden in the folds of every single shadow, and a shadow cast by each and every light. With each of us who live and exist, being far more than our outermost physical appearances may lead one to deceptively believe.
Published 15th Aug 2022
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