Behind Closed Doors | KoL (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
behindcloseddoors) wrote2014-01-30 03:51 pm
behindcloseddoors) wrote2014-01-30 03:51 pm
Entry tags:
CLOSED ♔ and who shall i blame for this sweet and heavy trouble
♬ the fleecing - pedro the lion
WHO || Des, Azrael [Closed]
WHAT || Des learns some unfortunate things
WHERE || Chicago
WHEN || Sometime during the trial, immediately following this [backdated]
HOW || Actionspam. Single thread.
AND SUDDENLY DES FINDS HIMSELF... on a roof. Above what looks like is still Chicago. There's a bit of a chill wind out but it's still November, not the arctic chills of January, so they can deal. Azrael releases himself instantly and moves to sit on the ledge, looking down at the city.
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des is lying somewhere, in an open place, on the rocky ground. lucifer stands some distance away, in full glorified form, wings high and stiffly drawn behind him, and he sees God Incarnate, risen, the wounds still red on His ankles and His wrists, but He has been bathed and cleaned and His body is on the same scale of Lucifer, greater than human. His robes are white and fresh and His dark hair still richly colored with dried blood, but beautifully combed. it seems more light seeps through the epidermal cells of His body than before His crucifixion, and He gives off a powerful radiance, which renders the radiance of Lucifer slightly dim by comparison. the two do not fight each other, and are basically the same kind of light.
des can hear them - arguing. out of the corner of his eye he can see this is a battlefield littered with the dead. it's not the same time as the fourth crusade - this is an earlier epic, and the bodies were the armor and clothes that he connects to an early century AD, though he can't be certain which.
the dead stink. the air is filled with feasting insects and even some lowering, awkward vultures, which have come to tear at the swollen hideous flesh of the soldiers, and far off, he hears the nasty argument, in growls and barking - of contending wolves. ]
Yes, I see! [ lucifer is angry, speaking in a tongue that isn't english but one des understands perfectly. ] The gateway is open to Heaven for all those who die with Understanding and Acceptance of the Harmony of Creation and the Goodness of God! But what about the others! What about the millions of others! Has your Chosen ascended yet, to redeem them? They believe you died for their sins! They think you have already done the work for them!
[ "And once again, I must ask you," says the Son of God, "why I should care about the others! Those who die without understanding and acceptance and knowledge of God. Why? What are they to me?" ]
Your Created children, that's what they are! With the capacity for Heaven if only they could find the way! And the number of the lost exceeds by billions those few who have the wisdom, the guidance, the experience, the insight, the gift. And you know it! How can you let so many vanish into the shadows of Sheol once more, or disintegrate, or hug the earth becoming evil spirits? Didn't you come to save them all?
[ "I came to teach them how to save themselves," He says. "Again, I tell you it is a cycle, it is Natural, and for each soul that goes now unimpeded into the Light of Heaven, thousands of others must fall. Of what value is it to Understand, to Accept, to Know, to See the Beauty? What would you have me do?" ]
Help the souls who are lost! Help them. Don't leave them in the whirlwind, don't leave them in Sheol struggling for millenia to gain understanding after death by what they can still see on Earth! Make your message clear to man, let him know what to aspire to, make the path available to all! You've made things worse, that's what you've done!
[ "How dare you!" ]
You've made it worse! Look at this battlefield, and Your Cross appeared in the sky before this battle, and now Your Cross becomes the emblem of the empire! Since the death of the witnesses who saw your Risen Body, only a trickle of the dead have gone into the Light from Earth, and multitudes have been lost in argument, and battle, and misunderstanding, languishing in darkness!
[ "My Light is for those who would receive it." ]
That's not good enough!
[ God Incarnate strikes Lucifer hard across the face. Lucifer staggers back, wings unfolding, as if reflexively so that he can take flight. But they settle once again, a few graceful white feathers swirling in the air, and Lucifer raises his hand to the imprint of God's hand which blazes on the side of his face. The imprint is distinct, blood-red as the wounds on the ankles and hands of Christ.
"Very well. Since you care more for those lost souls than you do for your God, let your lot be to collect them! Let Sheol be your kingdom! Gather them there by the millions and tutor them for the Light. I say none shall dissolve or disintegrate beyond your power to draw them back into being; I say none shall be lost, but all shall be your responsibility, your students, your followers, your servants.
"And since you spite the salvation I have offered mankind, since you believe them too weak to produce a saviour such as I have prophesied, let your lot be to try and thwart my Chosen, to drive them to breaking, to renounce my name and their quest, to admit the suffering not worth my Light!
"And until such a day as Sheol is empty! Until such a day as all souls go directly to the Heavenly Gates, or until you turn six hundred and sixty six of my would-be saviors from their path, you are my Adversary, you are my Devil, you are Damned to spend your time on Earth which you love so much and Sheol or Hell, whichever you choose to call it, your Kingdom. And only now and then by my grace may you come into Heaven, and see to it that when you do you have your angelic form!
"On the Earth, let them see you as the demon! The Beast God - the God of the dance and drink and the feast and the flesh and all the things you love enough to challenge Me. Let them see you as that, if you have would have the power to stand against me, and your wings shall be the color of soot and ashes, and your legs shall be as a goat's legs, as if you were Pan himself! Or as a man only - yes I give you that mercy, that you may be a man among them, since you think it such a worthy enterprise to be human. But an Angel among them, no! Never!
"You will not use your Angelic form to confuse and mislead them, to dazzle them or humble them. You and your Watchers did that enough. But see that when you come through my gates, you are properly attired for me, that your robes like snow. Remember to be yourself in my realm!" ]
I can do it! I can teach them; I can guide them. You let me run Hell as I choose to run it and I can reclaim them for Heaven; I can undo all that your Natural Cycle has done to them on Earth. And if I prove that your path to Absolution is impossible, that you ask too much of these human souls, you will admit you have done wrong in this system of Suffering and Confusion? You will grant them a greater part of your Light and redeem them from this world of death and decay?
[ "I should like to see you do it! Send me more souls through your purgation. Go ahead. Increase my Glory. Increase the bene ha elohim. Heaven is endless and welcomes your efforts. Do what you can to turn those who would walk the path of Christ, those prospects who would willingly suffer for my Glory knowing what awaits them in the end, from their path. Make them believe the entirety of creation conspires against them and you will see that humanity will produce One who will walk unbowed beneath the weight of whatever earthly torments are brought to bear upon them!
"But you don't come home forever until one of these tasks is finished. Until the passage from Earth to Heaven includes all those who die, or until 666 of my finest saints are led astray by your delusions, or until the world itself is destroyed - until evolution has unfolded to the point where Sheol, for one reason or another, is empty, and mark my words, Lucifer, that day may never come! I have promised no ending to the unfolding of the universe! So you have a long tenure among the damned." ]
And what on Earth? What are my powers? Goat God or Man, what can I do?
[ "What you should do! Warn humans. Warn them so that they come to me and not to Sheol." ]
And I can do that my way? By telling them what a merciless God you are, and that to kill in your name is wicked, and that suffering warps and twists and damns its victims more often than redeems them? I can tell them the truth? That if they would go to you, they would abandon your religions and your holy wars and your magnificent martyrdom? They would seek to understand what the mystery of the flesh tells them, the ecstasy of love tells them? You give me permission? You give me permission to tell the truth?
[ "Tell them what you will! And in each case that you draw them away from my churches, my revelations, misunderstood and garbled though they may be - in every case that you turn them away, you risk another pupil in your hellish school, another soul which you must reform. Your hell will be crammed to overflowing!" ]
Not through my doings, Lord. It will be full to overflowing, but that will be thanks to you!
[ "You dare! Tell them what you will, Lucifer, but you will not pour your lies into my Chosen, those who the angels who serve me identify as prospects for this quest to Absolution. Twist those around them, recruit those you would from their confidants to try to steer them into sin and fear as you so espouse. But until they stand ready to cross the Waters of Lethe, you will not speak to them, nor tell them why they suffer! Let their strength and faith show you how wrong you are! They will not need the secrets of the universe to be revealed to them, they will not demand them as you have done. They will Believe in Me and My Plan." ]
Let it unfold, my Lord, as you have said it always should. Only now I am part of it, and Hell is part of it. And will you give me those angels who believe as I do, and will work for me, and endure this same darkness with me?
[ "Take them! They will be cast down with you, and you may recruit other helpers from the earthbound themselves, as I know you have already learned to do with your unholy powers - granting new bodies to spirits to make them immortal monstrosities to serve you! The Watchers who fell with you will be cast down into your pit. Take them!" ]
I will. Hobble us in our earthly forms if you will, but still we will triumph. I will bring more souls through Sheol to Heaven than you will bring by your direct Gate. I will bring more reformed souls singing of Paradise than you will ever gather through your narrow tunnel. It is I who will fill Heaven and magnify your glory. You will see.
[ they fall silent. lucifer is in a fury, and God Incarnate in a fury or so it seems, the two figures facing each other, both of equal size, except that Lucifer's wings spread back and out in the semblance of a form of power, and from God Incarnate comes the more powerful, heartrendingly beautiful Light.
Suddenly, God Incarnate smiles.
"Either way, I triumph, don't I?" God asks. ]
I curse you!
[ "No, you don't," God says sadly and gently. He reaches out and He touches Lucifer's face and the imprint of His angry hand vanishes off the angelic skin. God Incarnate leans forward and kisses Lucifer.
"I love you, my brave adversary!" He says. "It is good that I made you, as good as all else I've made. Bring souls to me. You are only part of the cycle, part of Nature, as wondrous as a bolt of lightning or the eruption of a great volcano, as a star exploding suddenly, miles and miles out in the galaxies so that thousands of years pass before those on earth see its light." ]
You are a merciless God. I shall teach them to forgive you what you are - Majestic, Infinitely Creative, and Imperfect.
[ God Incarnate laughs softly and kisses him again on the forehead.
"I am a wise God and a patient God. I am the One who made you."
the images vanish. they do not fade. they simply disappear. des lies on the battlefield alone. the stench is a layer of gases hanging over him, poisoning every breath he draws.
for as far as he can see, there are dead men. ]
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That explains a lot.
Des sits up with a groan and then gags midway through it. He takes a shuddering breath though his mouth to stave off the stench, but only comes up choking again.
He shakes it off, forcing himself to his feet so he can get a better look across the battlefield. (spot 20 total)]
Okay? Now what.
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Yes. That's a great plan.]
Nice doggie. Go on. Get.
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[Think like a Stark???] So are you my power animal or what?
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the sky overhead is the daytime sky of earth, full of white clouds, but other than the slavering wolf trying to eat him, he also gets to hear the storm of insects - gnats and flies rising and swirling here and there over the bodies - and see big humpish ugly vultures tiptoeing over the feast.
from far away is the sound of human weeping. ]
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And he really doesn't want to deal with the vultures. HE WILL DEAL WITH THE WEEPING WHEN THE WOLF GOES AWAY.]
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the clouds roll by so that they release the sun in all its power, and down comes the warmth on his face and hands, and the warmth only makes him conscious of how tired he is and how all his body wants is to rest now k thanks ]
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That whole punching a wolf thing did not help any. He blinks in the sunlight for a few seconds, but that's exhausting and maybe if he closes his eyes for a bit, he'll feel better...
Yeah. Good plan. Just gonna lie here in the middle of this gross field of dead bodies and take a nap.]
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the sounds of Heaven are faint and achingly seductive as they come from beyond the walls. all songs sing the same refrain: "Come in, come here, come inside, be with us. Chaos is no more. This is Heaven."
but he is far from that, in a little valley, amid wildflowers, tiny white and yellow wildflowers, on the grass bank of the stream which all souls cross to get to Heaven, only here it seems no more than any magnificent rushing stream. or rather, it sings a song that says - after smoke and war and soot and blood, after stench and pain - All streams are as magnificent as this stream.
water sings in multiple voices as it slides over rocks and down through tiny gullies and rushes abruptly over rises in the earth so that it may again tumble in a mingling of fugue and canon. while the grass bends its head to watch.
des lies against the trunk of a tree, what the peach tree might be if she bloomed forever, both blossoms and fruit, so that she is never bare of either, and her limbs hang down not in submission but with this richness, this fragrance, this offering. above, amid fluttering petals, the supply of which seems inexhaustible and never alarming, he sees the fleeting movement of tiny birds. and beyond that, angels, and angels, and angels, as if they are made of air, the light luminous glittering spirits so faint as to vanish at times in one brilliant breath of the sky.
the cool sweet air surrounds him, slowly removing, layer by layer, the soot and filth that cling to his coat and shirt. his shoes, however, are broken and tattered and barely held together anymore.
petals fall in his hair, a shower of them, pink and white.
to the left, in a copse of olive trees, lucifer and azrael stand in their human looking forms. lucifer is collected, his face grim and set, and azrael's eyes are sympathetic, a small, sad smile on her face. their images begin to grow and spread, and they sprout huge black wings. ]
The argument is simple. Do you have any trouble understanding it now?
[ their black wings come in close, hugging their bodies, lower tips curve forward, near their feet, so that they do not scrape the ground. they walk towards him. ]
If you'd like, you may ask any Angel you choose to corroborate the truth of things. But as we said, neither side is prone to directly lying.
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[He stares at his ruined boots and sighs drearily and begins to kick them off before he trips over them or they fall apart while he's walking.]
I get it. We're looking to end the need for suffering. I can get behind that.
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But that myth of the suffering and Dying God - whether we speak of Tammuz of Sumer or Dionysus of Greece, or any other deity the world over, whose death and dismemberment preceded Creation - this was a Human idea! An idea conceived by Humans who could not imagine a Creation from nothing, one which did not involve a sacrifice, a price. The Dying God who gives birth to Man was a young idea in the minds of those too primitive to conceive of anything absolute and perfect. So He grafted himself - God Incarnate - upon human myths that try to explain things as if they had meaning, when perhaps they don't.
Where was His sacrifice in making the world? He is not Osiris, chopped into pieces! What did He, Almighty God, give up to make the material universe? I do not remember seeing anything taken from Him. That it came out of Him, this is true, but I do not remember Him being lessened, or decimated, or maimed, or decreased by the act of Physical Creation. He was, after the Creation of the planets and the stars, the same God! If anything He was increased, or seemed to be in the eyes of His angels, as they sang of new and varying aspects of His Creation. His very nature as Creator grew and expanded in our perceptions, as evolution took His path.
But when He came as God Incarnate, He imitated myths that men had made to try to sanctify all suffering, to try to say that history is not horror, but has meaning. He plunged down into man-made religion and brought His Divine Grace to those images, and He sanctified suffering by His death, whereas it had not been Sanctified in His Creation, you understand?
It was a bloodless Creation and without sacrifice. But He does believe suffering is sacrosanct or can be. Nothing is wasted. All things are used. But my position is that He took the awful flaw in His cosmos - human pain, misery, the capacity to suffer unspeakable justice - and He found a place for it, using the worst superstitious beliefs of Men.
And now when people die, where they lived in places of peace and prosperity, where they were exposed to such privilege, they find the tunnel and the Light and Loved Ones. They rise without hate or resentment, directly into Heaven. And so do some who have no belief in Him whatsoever or His teachings. Because they too are Illuminated. And this gratifies Him and expands His Heaven, and Heaven is ever enhanced and enriched by these new souls from all quarters of the world.
But Hell - Hell so far exceeds the size of Heaven as to be laughable. Where on this planet has He ruled where there has not been self-sacrifice, injustice, persecution, torment, war! Every day my confused and embittered pupils are increased in number. There are times of such privation and horror that few souls ascend to Him in peace at all.
And He does not care. He says that suffering of sentient beings is like decay; it fertilizes the growth of their souls! He looks from His lofty height upon a massacre, and He sees magnificence. He sees men and women never loving so much as when they lose their loved ones, never loving so much as when they sacrifice for others for some abstract notion of Him, never loving so much as when the conquering army comes down to lay waste the hearth, divide the flock, and catch up the bodies of infants on their spears.
His justification? It's in Nature. It's what He created. And if battered and embittered souls must fall into my hands first and suffer my tutelage in Hell, so much the greater will they become!
But. As I said, I am winning. But I have to win on His terms. Hell is a place of suffering. But let's go over it carefully, so you know what to expect. Look at it; what He did:
When He threw open the gates of Sheol, when He went down into the gloom of Sheol, like the god Tammuz into the Sumerian hell, the souls flocked to Him and saw His redemption and saw the wounds in His Hands and Feet, and that He should die for them gave a focus to their confusion, and of course they flooded with Him to the Gates of Heaven - for everything they had suffered seemed suddenly to have a meaning.
But did it have a meaning? Can you give a sacred meaning to the cycle of Nature simply by immersing your Divine Self in it? Is that enough?
What about the souls who shrink in bitterness, who never flower as the heels of warriors walk over them, what about the souls warped and twisted by unspeakable injuries, who go into eternity cursing, what about a whole modern world which is personally angry with God, angry enough to curse Jesus Christ and God Himself as Luther did, as you have done, as so many of these days do.
People in your modern world have never stopped believing in Him, even with the rise of so many pagan deities of the Shadow World. It's that they hate Him; they resent Him; they are furious with Him. They feel... they feel... [ he searches for the word ]
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I can't show them His wounds in Hell. That isn't going to win them over, these victims, these grieving, furious sufferers of pain beyond His imagining. I can just tell them that it was the Dominican Fathers in His Name who burnt their bodies alive, thinking them witches. Or that when their families and clans and villages were annihilated by Spanish soldiers, it was all alright because His bleeding Hands and Feet were on the banner which the men carried to the New World. You think that would get somebody out of Hell, finding out that He let it happen? And lets other souls ascend without suffering one drop of pain?
If I were to begin their education with that image - Christ has Died for You - how long do you think the Hellish education of a soul would take?
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Tell them their best chance lies in surpassing God? By being above His shit? I could get behind that.
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I don't begin by telling that for Him, the human eye expresses the perfection of creation when it looks with horror upon a maimed body, just as it expresses the perfection of Creation when it looks in peace upon a garden.
What do you think Hell is? You must have a surmise by now.
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What do you think the souls of Hell should undergo to be fully qualified for Heaven?
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Living's enough. People go full serial killer in God's name and I bet they still get a comfy seat inside the gates, so claiming there's some arbitrary badness level that means you're never getting in is just as bad as saying there's some suffering quota you have to hit and rise above beforehand. Look at those Iscariot fuckers, assuming any of them actually die-
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Do you think it's right, that those who are truly evil: those who commit unspeakable horrors - rapists, serial murderers, those who prey on children - should be afforded Heaven as they are when they die? Should they have to pay for it?
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[He shrugs.] So do you punish the damned or not?
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What should a soul have to endure to be worthy of Heaven, if we start by believing that no one is beyond redemption? Is it enough to say 'I believe in God', 'Jesus, I believe in your Suffering'? Is it enough for them to say 'I'm sorry for all my sins because they offend thee, my God' or to say, 'I'm sorry because when I was on Earth, I really didn't believe in You and now I know it's true, and wham, bang, one look at this infernal place and I'm ready to believe! I wouldn't do anything the same way, and please let me into Heaven quick'?
Should creatures who have tortured and killed other creatures, people who have deliberately duplicated through their actions punishments as severe as disease or fire or earthquake or any natural disaster just go to Heaven? If they don't know, if they don't understand, if they haven't begun to comprehend what they've done. Would not Heaven, in no time, be Hell, if every cruel, vicious, selfish monster of Earth were to go there? If it were so easy, then the suffering of the world would be worse than intolerable. It would be damned near unforgivable.
What would be forgivable - from the point of view of a soul who died in pain and confusion? A soul who knew that God didn't care? When I spoke to you of Sheol, I spoke of selecting people who had forgiven God for an unjust world, not reformed monsters. But those were people who had been victims of God's injustice. What about the souls of the guilty? The transgressors, those who commit injustices?
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Or just leave them there to rot because torment never got an honest confession out of anyone. I don't know. I do know that if I didn't want these people alive, I sure as sunshine wouldn't want to share an afterlife with them.
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I'm asking you this: Given all that you have seen - What do you think Hell should be! Go on. Make a statement. You already know it to be akin more to what earthly souls call purgatory.
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