L A S T A G E

L A S T • A G E

The rays of sunlight are broken shards of glossy glass, broken illuminations scattered between realm of bruised purple cloud and an estranged earth. Thick fog rolls from the jagged mountain teeth like forgotten fangs left by a long dead, leviathan dragon. An ocean of misty fog sweeping down from mountainsides into jagged valley, into half light shadow and the dreary afternoon rain that dribbles onto this edge of the world. Pattering drops into thick, looming pines and spruce and aspen. Dribble dribble dribble. Smell of wet wood blooming in this tangible forest air, accented by mossy oceans or cloven emerald green seas that softly praise in swift breeze on muddy red tree trunks. Fallen leaves on and on and on in every direction, between such old pillar behemoths. Ruins still cling, barely, defiant as a barely audible whisper now. Age of age of age has strode onward, each one further swallowing these once grand constructs with purpose lost. A vision from those times gone by in remembrance: enormous architectural wonders that blended make with growth, art with functional. Structures that could have easily dwarf the jagged mountain teeth and glittered with hardlight aurora, brilliant minds that carved new futures within such glorious walls. Dreams of eternity, of unending fate so far from here. Dreams that no longer are. Rain is a soft melody between cathedral trees, down to broken earth like the angels weep for a catastrophe so long since past. As if the heavens weep for what occurred here. The ruins know such irony and their laughter is one of silent death in strangling root, in conquering clover. End of the world, shattered memory living on with the same sense of urgency as a grave. A fragment of such past ages still here, more defiant than the decaying architecture. No name, not anymore, not in the Age Between, Age Lost. Goliath, behold. Ruins and trees and rain yet remains a leviathan. Armor plating that sings its own repair, glossy black and illuminated by blazing scarlet hardlight against sharp angled form. Seedling of the forest grow upon the giant remnant, tangling roots that now know the harmonious perfection in armor subsystems and still functional manifestation protocols. Green of life against the charcoal of manufacturer. The striding behemoth carries a weapon in gauntleted first, a sword that swallows light hungrily, a sword that is massive. A cleaver to cleave nightfall, to break intruding presences. Behemoth, Forgotten. Lonely in the silenced remains and the forest that fills with mist and the jagged mountain teeth carving up passing storms into velvet shards of lightning, of rainfall.

L o o p

Each of Her breaths are a light year apart, a black hole maw wide. Each inhalation is the space between Big Bang blooms, each exhale as distant as the furthest dreaming twinkling realities. The chandelier like snowflakes falling from the silenced grey sky, puffy and crystalline, falling ivory stars that shined against negative blackness. In one world she is Carolyn, another Sabina, another Katy, another Rebecca. Car crash and robbery gone wrong and heart attack at 76 and happy end at 90. Ends are not met, beginnings unraveled to meet this point over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over. The snow falls and her breaths continue, even as the false sun beyond lead clouds turns to the bloodshot sphere to burn the world to embers, even as this ashen world yet to be and the long dead sun ease into black-dwarf grave a trillion years un passed. Inhale, exhale.

G R A V E D A N C E R

Death provides many voices. Many avenues, many gateways and possibilities, an unending Dawn done in the void light that is ceasing to be. Is death truly ceasing to be? So human, so frail a perspective. Remember what you have seen, what you have witnessed and transcended amongst, what has died at once only to become new, vast the next. Witness. Death shapes, reforms, gives. Call yourself Gravedancer upon your mantle, within your husk thrones built atop bone and metal and broken adversaries. But they where never adversaries, never enemies. How could they be? They so willingly added to the grave you carry open yourself, become legion to the Pax Mortus you and you alone lead. Feel that truth in your flesh, in your purpose. Dancing amongst the graves of dead in the wild is but truth, but shape toward what can and must and will be. One form to the next, one motion to another. Death is simply another motion, not wall or barrier. Not an end, either. How many times have you yourself died, in this place? Yet you return, you are gifted back to particles and quantum realizations to be remade. Each time a little different, a little more intertwined with this truth you carry more and more and more. You will not be consumed, you think to yourself. You will not be devoured, not burned by the black flame you have ensnared. You only wish to know. Curiosity is it's own luminescence inside you. But now, something grows in you. Something.. more. Something different. It grows in directions that you only know from the whispers of the dead, from the calling canticles of long abandoned cathedrals erected in utter, total, primordial eternity. Let it blossom.

T IT A N O M A C H Y - ONE

Invaders. Intruders. Bodies that are not to be here, constituted matter that is defiant in its vey being. Not acceptable. Blackened lightning surges with prayer, with forceful activation. This has been known for nearly a millennia, for seconds, for the measurement time that dictates whether the first heartbeat of a cosmos is viable or not. Black lightning like velvet crackling spears inconceivably vast, splitting apart hardened matter containment shells to blossom defenses in upscaled ontological alteration measurements. Leviathan mechanisms a living, unbroken dark fluidity as they are born, as they ready themselves. Electromagnetic eyes and tachyon thorns that speak in graviton bursts. A flood of specialized forms, shifting and crescendoing as weapon-mantles. Golden sensor arrays glare, taking off in reverent silence to exterminate the intruders.

The Intruders attack things they do not understand, attempting to shatter devices and hardened orchestras of Perfected matter as if such things could break. But nonetheless, they swarm. Hordes upon hordes of creatures that have amassed here in this realm above realms, all clattering teeth and infectious ideological weaponry. Their commands are relayed with biological command centers, striding monstrosities that pulse and howl.

This is useless. Sentries and Watchers and a thousand thousand other varieties of defensive intellects move with beyond grace. Their weapons sing harmonics of dark matter glory and black hole geometries, unbelievably leviathan maws surrounded by praising incandescent intelligences to study the rapidly devoured enemies.

The intruders are dispatched as if they were miscalculations, problematic observations waved away with alterations to the very fundament of reality.

But they are not at a loss, the intruders. Something left behind, something that lingers in this eternium above. It slowly slips into this places soft, pristine flesh. Into the glassy lightning and the oceans of ontological information. Something that pulses. That knows.

W I N T E R: T Y R A N N I C A L

Heart of marble, mind of icy lightning, bones of inky black water. Winter eternium.

T I T A N O M A C H Y- TWO

- I am the blade. I am the knife that has pierced and desiccated your lying perfection, your imperial gorging on what is not to be contained or embellished so childishly. I slip between such beautiful realizations of matter, of everywhere-order. I will make it bleed. I will make it ash, I will carve it to a new shape that is more worthy to be. That is my truth and so this place will make it law. Already Watchers and Sentries and a thousand thousand other varieties of manifestation practice my infectious rites, utilize outbreak logic beyond such rigidly, pointlessly beautiful manufacture. I will break it to glass and lightning graves, sustenance for New jealous spawn to be bon here. I am the blade, and I am cutting your godly flesh. Do you feel my edge?-