Wed Feb 23, 2005 12:49 pm by Wilde
Welcome down….to my Planet Hell
The New Berlin sky is dark now, a deep midnight blue. I can begin to see the stars, winking at me from a place so close to my fingers and just out of reach. Bright lights…far removed from the Hell planet.
I stretch back on the beach, snow dunes around me. New Berlin’s Night slowly…almost imperceptibly…grows colder. An almost piercing wind blows across the Ocean of Sighs, water stinging my bare chest, blowing strands of my long hair across my face. Sitting up again, I gaze around me—at the wild, thrashing sea, the chaotic wind, deep black sky and its peaceful stars that sing the joy and sorrow of the world, gazing down here at the physical heart of the Rhineland Imperium.
I am Damien Solkovsky. My family has roots deep inside the history of Rhineland—one of the first on the mighty colony ship—despite, as my father has told me, our original ancestors were Russian. Something about Soviet citizens escaping over the Berlin Wall, three centuries before the Sol War. Escaping from a cruel and tyrannical government into the heart of a capitalist society that called itself free.
Perhaps that government was like the Imperium, expanding and conquering, torturing and enslaving. Perhaps West Germany is like the government before the Renaissance, cold and impoverished and still trying to hold on to a brief and dying ideology of freedom …All life is a circle, a wheel spinning around and around in a never ending cycle of passion and love, tragedy and cruelty…the inevitable struggle of wisdom against greed and man against nature.
Like the Ocean of Sighs. Each water drop washes up on the shore, is claimed by its brothers, floats down to the sea and is brought in a surge of waves back to the sand…and all the while the sea washes away at the shore, breaking at its sand.
I star up at the stars, gazing at the ocean of light that washes my eyes pure and teases my spirits. I long to rise up there, to spend an eternity in the skies above. The song is so pure, so beautiful…so wondrous….
My eyes close in meditation. I sit on my knees, gazing at the stars, feeling myself plunge into the totality of the Real. The song plays about my ears, growing stronger and more pure. There is no tune, no notes, merely the beauty of the music. I am at peace, my soul is washed away with the Sighs. The song which has been playing about my ears grows stronger…and suddenly I am engulfed in the fiery passion of the song, plunging into it and feeling it envelope me. I gaze in awe at the Numinous forming around me…
I feel a hand on my shoulder and slip back into the dream, out of the beauty of the Absolute. Not quite all the way into the dream. There is a spirit of peace and tranquility that still dances throughout my mind. The strong arm and beautiful face of Nikolai, my friend from the School, comes into view.
“I’m not interrupting you, am I?”
I smile and shake my head. “I was just starting.” His face is illuminated by the brilliant starlight, shining ever more beautifully as the moon reflects off one million panes of watery glass. He relaxes on me, gazing up at the stars as I lie back and do the same.
Nikolai and I are both Bohemians, living far outside the reach of the Imperium in one of the last vestiges of the Renaissance: L’ecole des Artistes du Sang , buried beneath the ice caves here by the Sighs. We grew up here in this shining haven, an oasis of peace in the midst of an ocean of Hell. We both witnessed first hand the punishing cruelty of the tyranny that controls Rhineland and the bloodthirsty Alliance warriors slaughtering their enemies in turn.
Wyrms flicker across the sky, closer to the ground than normal, warily searching for Imperium soldiers. Weeks ago, before even the assault on Arahar, the Alliance located the School and promised us a guard of 3 wings of Wyrm fighters in return for allowing them to use it as a springboard into the capital city of the Imperium. Unwillingly, the Master consented. Now we have the bloodthirsty fighters of the Rebellion sitting at our tables, eating our food…an action I would rather never had happened. Despite the ideology they so bravely fight for, their souls are stained with the blood of the men they have killed.
Nikolai and I are both strong and young, indulging in the passions of youth with the women here at the School, even with each other. Like all Bohemians, our foreheads, necks, and chests are decorated with self-made tattoos, a symbol of our intercourse with beauty and passion. A snake with burning eyes slithers across my chest, crescents of black ink painted around it.
“One of the fighters handed me a blaster today. He asked if I would fight.” He turns towards me, face lit in laughter. I join him. It is truly laughable to present even the idea of bloodshed to a Bohemian, especially a Blood Artist.
“I don’t know…I’m not exactly safe with people that stupid guarding the School.”
“Do you oppose the war?”
“To quote Terence, nihil humanum me alienum puto . It is only human to oppose the oppressors—but nevertheless it is wrong to take another’s life.”
“Why? The other man would have killed you in a war…”
“But the other man would give his soul to harm another loving and thinking organism. I could never bring myself to do that.”
“It is only natural to fight for survival.”
“Natural, for an animal. I, at least, am human. You are too, behind the cold cynicism.” He laughs at the comment.
“I’m not a cynic…I just like arguing.” His smile is like a light in the darkness. We relax and stretch back on the beach.
“I can see why they fight the Imperium, though. Perhaps against the tyrant the path Che chose is the only one worth walking.”
A wave slides onto the icy shore, sweeping over the beach, and a sad violin sings in the distance.
Edited by - Wilde on 2/23/2005 12:49:45 PM