The Revelations of A Lord

“Vitae poscaenia celant.” Translation: “Men conceal the past scenes of their lives.”  -Titus Lucretius Carus

Cyril stood on the soft, misty turf of Heaven. He wore the thick robes of the Seraph Lord. They were white, gilded with brilliant gold in a simple linear pattern.  Small pearl gems lined the cuffs of the long sleeves that reached mid-way past his palms. A complex and subtle pattern was woven throughout the robes in a slightly darker white. Cyril’s brilliant white ki wings spread out behind him, drooping inattentively as he mulled over things silently. He stood just outside a large, thick, and slightly hallucinogenic forest with the silver, three headed pike planted firmly in the ground in front of and slightly to the left of him. The delicate, silver trees rustled slightly as a soft wind blew. A storm was blowing in on the horizon, it wouldn’t break for another hour or so Cyril reckoned. The twin suns’ light was veiled by the slowly gathering clouds. The soft light looked tiny and delicate against the deep blue of space. A city stood to the north of Cyril. It stood strong and proud, yet strangely dainty and alien. Which it was of course since this planet wasn’t even from this universe. The sterile white buildings spiraled into the sky and were in stark contrast with the dark blue sky. Seraphim came to and fro from the city, carrying out with their lives; going to meet family members, going out to shop, taking friends out to dinner. Normal things unhindered by heavy thoughts and ghastly actions.
Unfortunately, Cyril was not blessed with such a nice and simple day. He would not be going to and fro from beautiful and strange planets today. He would not be flitting about the universe travelling, or running as he normally would. Today Cyril was bogged down by his own past, today Cyril had an obligation to fill. He stood for awhile gazing at the city and the sky. Thunder rumbled and the storm finally broke. Rain began to came down hard, but Cyril didn’t mind. Being wet was the last thing he was worrying about. Cyril took a step forward and grabbed his pike planted in the ground. He pulled it out and sighed. He tapped the ground and the ground responded by reaching up, grabbing him, and pulling him down.
Cyril was brought back up just inside the doors of the Silver Palace. The icy walls glittered dully and the hall seemed even emptier than usual. Cyril leaned on his pike, suddenly feeling very old. He walked across the hall to a door behind the throne. His pike clinked against the floor as he walked. Clink. Clink. Clink. Clink. The clinking stopped as he reached the large, wooden door. The hinges were a dull color and looked frozen, the wood looked as if it had warped and would never open again. Cyril reached out to grab the brass handle and pulled. It opened with a bit of a fuss but it opened nonetheless. Inside was a spiraling, stone staircase. Sconces lined the walls with unlit torches. Cyril took the nearest torch from a sconce and lit it with his ki. Cyril began the ascent up the staircase and lit each torch as he reached it. Cyril didn’t actually know how far the stairs went but he knew where he needed to get off. He counted the torches as he came to him. One, two, three, four, five and Cyril reached a door. Cyril continued on and found that there was a pattern of five torches between doors and seven steps between each torch. Cyril lost count after sixty-three thousand and had stopped caring about a thousand before. Finally, Cyril reached the end of the stairs and came to a warm, red door. The paint was fading and was gilded with faint lines of silver and gold. He reached out and tentatively grasped the handle; it was warm to the touch. Cyril turned the knob and pushed open the door. Inside was a huge library. The walls were 20 yards high and filled with silver-wood bookshelves filled with hundreds of thousands of books. This was the personal library of all the past Lords of Heaven. In it contained all the knowledge ever known to the Seraph race and some knowledge that they didn’t even know. Every Lord was obliged by tradition to write an one hundred percent accurate and truthful autobiography of their life. Cyril took a small, silver, glowing globe from the wall beside him. It lit up in his hands and he began walking along the aisles. Soon Cyril found a sturdy silver wood desk with writing materials spread out neatly across it. Another table directly to the left of it held the necessary tools to bind a book or volume. There were of course more efficient and easier ways to write now, but tradition called for a self-bound book. Cyril sat down and sighed, once more feeling old and weighed down. He picked up a night wolf hair pen and pulled a piece of parchment towards him. It was time to start. It would be a very long process.

Word Count: 865

“There are worse things than a lie... I have found... that it may be well to choose one sin in order that another may be shunned.” –Anthony Trollope, Doctor Wortle’s School

Cyril had had a very, unimaginably long life. There were so many places to start and so many things to include, but Cyril knew right where to start. This was something that started well into his life, but Cyril would write it first- to soothe his conscience. Cyril dipped his night wolf hair pen into a jar of ink. Seraph pens are the equivalent of quills, don’t question it. He took a shuddering breath and pressed the pen against the parchment. With a slightly shaking hand, Cyril wrote a long, curling word. “Foreword.” He continued on and wrote out the first in a series of damning phrases:

Hundreds of years ago, I had a family. I had a mother and a father who were very dear to me. I had a younger sister, Espeth, to whom I was close. I had a wife, her name was Lily. Lily died honorably in the War of the Fallen right before my eyes. My parents died long before the war, peacefully and in the same night.  My sister, Espeth, died in the very same war before me as well. This volume will be, in a way, her story. Espeth was, with no embellishment, a genius. Some astute people will know that she was the leader of Project Genesis and died not more than a hundred years ago, fighting in the short-lived battle against her own creations, the Ix. This is, in a sense, absolutely true. She did indeed create the Ix, in fact I believe she was the only one who could have ever done it, and she did die in the War of the Fallen. But the details, if there are any who remember today, were not true. The War of the Fallen, contrary to my other accounts, happened a very, very long time ago and did not happen over the span of but a few days. It occurred almost a hundred years ago and lasted a full year. My false account says that it lasted only days and came to an abrupt halt when the Ix began the full invasion of Heaven and wiped us all out within the day. However, I only recounted the last day of the year long war. The events I have spoken of were only a fraction of the atrocities committed during the war. Now that you know that, here follows the true beginnings of the war and the part my sister, Espeth, played in it.
As you now know, Espeth was the leader of Project Genesis, an undertaking to create an entirely new race en mass. It took over nine centuries and three supernovae to complete, but eventually Espeth and her team succeeding in creating the Ix. We all rejoiced at the introduction of the Ix to the universe. The current Lord provided them a large class M planet that was in our own solar system so that they may begin work on their own society. Espeth and her team lived on that planet with the Ix for many years so that they could observe their work. A hundred years passed and the two civilizations lived beside each other peacefully. Espeth still resided with the Ix, and I had moved on to other galaxies, eager to explore and learn independently. I was at the home world of the marvelously advanced Gallian race learning from a Master Engineer when I heard news from Heaven that Semöl, the planet the Ix resided on, had closed its borders and shut down all communications. I was worried, so I hastened home to Heaven to see if my sister and her team had made it back home. I searched about and found that none of their remaining friends or family had heard from them. I talked to many of my connections the following week to gather all the information I could. I discovered that there were reports of an army building behind the scenes and the last communications with the Ix had been unusually tense. By all accounts, it looked like they were preparing an invasion on Heaven. Reports were coming in from many nearby planets informing us of increased military presence on their shared borders. A far away asteroid range that had been used for weapons testing long, long ago was suddenly in use again and the Ix were the ones there. Trading and civilian ships had been stopped and directed around certain areas of space. I didn’t know how the Ix had managed to keep such activities quiet, but they did it very well. Deeply disturbed by this news, I stormed into the nearest military base and purchased what I needed for a successful stealth mission….


Word Count: 1,029

((Is this it?))

145,000,000PL

((Yup. you remembered the personal saga bonus, right?))

((Mhm))