Warning And Threats
To proceed, know
that I will be discussing key plot points for Into This River I Drown and (surprise!) another of my novels, Burn. There is also a brand new short story at the end of this post.
If you haven’t read River and are planning to, you shouldn’t read this
as it will be filled with a lot of spoilers.
If you haven’t read Burn,
that’s okay, but some of this might not make sense.
Still
here?
Okay,
so how much do you hate me right now?
The
messages and emails I have received from readers have been very sweet, often
telling their own story of how they lost a loved one in their lives at one
point or another. But at some point in
said email or message, is a variation of the following sentence: “I cursed you
out SO much in this story, especially at (fill in the blank)!” What was awesome, was everyone seems to have
a different “fill in the blank” part.
Ah. I love that.
So much.
I’ll
be discussing a few of the hows and whys of certain things that happened in
River. Then, at the end, I have a story
for you to read, for those that want to go just a bit further down the rabbit
hole.
Ready?
Calliel Didn’t Exist
When I first
started writing River, Calliel was to be a guy called Jake and he was a drifter
who blew into town, and at some point, would be revealed to have been part of
the drug operation that was running through the small town of Rosedale, which
was revealed toward the end. There was
nothing supernatural about Jake, who was just a regular dude.
And
then it hit me one day, weirdly, right after I’d gotten done writing the first
chapter, that I wanted it to be
paranormal, given that I was sure that Benji was actually haunted by ghosts, not just memories.
What if he was an angel? my weird little
inner voice asked me.
Uh… what?
Think about it: he’s like this big,
badass, fallen angel dude who crashes into the woods in Roseland!
Uh… I don’t know a single thing
about angels.
Oooo. Yeah.
And you hate research of any kind.
Yeah.
So he’ll just be some boring drifter
guy named Jake. Neat. Yawn. I’m already bored for you and no one will
like this story and you’re stupid.
I like the boring drifter guy named Jake!
*silence*
Goddammit!
Fine! I’ll make him a fucking
angel!
And so I did. And yes, I hate research of any kind. I hate it with a passion. It also didn’t help that I am not a spiritual
person in any way shape or form. I don’t
go to church. I don’t have a specific
faith I subscribe too. I had a very
rudimentary understanding of God and angels, mostly what I’d heard from other
people.
But
I knew if I was going to do it, I’d have to do it right.
The
angel Calliel is “real”, at least as far as angel lore goes. He’s lowly placed on the totem pole, and as
soon as I came across him and his name, I knew I’d found the angel I was
looking for. The hierarchy for angels is
a fascinating thing, with literally hundreds if not thousands of named angels that are supposed to serve God in one way
shape or form. And each one was
supposedly created to serve a different purpose.
So
I had my angel. Jake became Calliel, or
Cal. I went back and made some changes,
then soldiered on. I found quickly that
going the angel direction opened up some awesome new ideas, but it also created
some big problems, of which I won’t bore you with here. Suffice to say, I may not have been a religious
person, but an early draft of River sounded way to fucking preachy, like I was
giving a sermon and didn’t know what I was talking about. Trust me when I say it was pretty bad.
It Goes On…And On…And On…
You think River
was long? You should have seen the
completed first draft. When I started writing River, I knew it was going to be
a long-ish story, maybe around the
length of BOATK. So, imagine my surprise
when I finished River and it was almost two
hundred and fifty thousand words long.
It was a bit ridiculous, really.
My plan initially was to split it into two books, but then my betas got
ahold of it and both said it worked better as a single book, so I cut, cut,
cut. The version you read of River is
189,000 words. That’s a lot of shit cut
to the floor. Most of it that was cut needed to be cut, because it really was
extraneous, no matter how much I kicked and screamed. A couple of things that were cut, however,
hurt like a motherfucker.
You know the ending
of River, how the final chapter is called The Sunrise? Benji and Cal sit on the roof, watching the sunrise
and all is well. Well, there were two additional chapters after that, the
first of which I thought wrapped up the story in a very cyclical way, mirroring
back toward the beginning chapter called “You and I”. And the other chapter? The very last one? Well, the last chapter was about some old
friends of mine, ones I hadn’t written about in a while. Friends that came out of nowhere and inserted
themselves into River. But more on them
in a moment.
Twists and Death
While
I tried to inject some humor into River, I knew even before I started that it
was going to be a dark book. It’s bleak
through most of it, the weight of Benji’s grief a palpable thing. There can be a point when that begins to be too much, so I tried for some levity
every now and then, a little bit of light in all that dark.
It
was still dark, regardless of the humor.
I know this, and I don’t know that it could have been told any other
way. There are a few points, though, I knew were going to be hard for most
everyone to read.
Abe. Ah, Abe.
That sucked. Like really, really
sucked. Originally, Nina was going to be
the one to die. That was in a version of
the story where the storm at the end destroyed the whole town, killing off a
lot of the residents of Roseland. I came
to realize that not only was it overkill, but also Nina had become more
important to not just this story, but to another story as well.
So
I had to choose someone who was close to Benji.
Why? Because I needed Benji to
reach the lowest of the lows before he could face Michael in the White
Room. I don’t think he could have had
the same understanding about the idea of sacrifice had he not lost someone near
to him after Big Eddie. I considered,
very briefly, having it be Lola, his mother, but again, that seemed like
overkill, given that he’d already lost his dad.
So it was Abe, no matter how much I didn’t want it to be. I went back and added a bit more about his
wife that had passed, Estelle. And then
I wrote his sacrificial scene (“THY WILL
BE DONE”). And it sucked having to
have that happen. Horribly. However,
I think it illustrated just how far Benji had come and just how evil
Griggs was. If there has ever been a
character I’ve written to be hated, it is Griggs.
And
Christie? Did you see that coming? I hope not.
I hope it was a gut punch. I knew
from the very beginning that she was going to be the “boss.” Every time I had to write her character, I
was scowling at my laptop monitor, thinking I
HATE YOU! But I also knew I had to
keep it as secret as possible, so I needed to pass her off as the sweet and
caring aunt. And honestly? I do believe she loved her sisters and Benji
in her own way. They were family, after
all. I think, however, that she was
drowning in her own river, and that came before anyone and anything else.
And
be honest: how many of you cursed my name when Cal was shot on the bridge? Did you really
think I’d kill him off? C’mon now. That wouldn’t be very nice of me, now would
it?
Why,
that would be just downright mean.
The Hardest Things I’ve Had To Write
Two chapters in
River are the hardest things I’ve ever had to write. The first was the chapter titled “These
Flickering Lights.” If you’ll remember,
that was the scene where Benji has to walk down the long hallway to go identify
his father’s corpse. It was tough
because you know that Big Eddie has
died, that Benji will see his body, but some part of you still hopes that he
won’t have to, that it was really a lie, a dream, a horrible nightmare and that
Big Eddie will be there and everything will be okay. I ached
for Benji when writing that. That long
walk down the hallway, hearing Big Eddie’s song sung in his head, those
memories rising like ghosts. And then to
have him pull back that scratchy sheet covering the body, only to see the
greatest man in his world lying beaten and broken? That’s where it became real for Benji. That’s when his river started. For want of his father, he was lost.
The other
chapter? You probably figured it
out. It was the one called “The River
Crossing.” I knew from the very
beginning that Benji would get to see Big Eddie one last time. He needed it.
And more so, I needed it, as Benji’s caretaker. I dreaded it as it approached, and when it
did, it took me a full week to write it.
I’ve never written anything more difficult than that final meeting. And I think that chapter is the best writing
I’ve ever done. If you read the
dedication to the book, then you probably know I didn’t write it just for
Benji. I wrote it for myself. I said the things I was never able to say in
real life. And that, to me, was
Michael’s gift.
The Biggest Secret Of All
Oh, my Burn readers. How I adore you. How I love you. You patient, patient people. How I like to mess with you so, so much. Admit it.
You didn’t see that coming, did you?
Yeah, neither did I. Imagine my
surprise when Michael showed up for the first time and started talking about
Elementals. I remember writing that, then
sitting back and going, “Uh, what the fuck?
Seriously? Seriously?!?!? As if I
didn’t have enough shit to worry
about here! FUCK!!!!!!”
But
then I thought about it a little bit more.
And
then I got this evil little smile on my face.
The
references to Burn and the Elementals
add up to no more than 500 words out of 189,000. Originally (as you’ll soon see), there were
more. As a matter of fact, the original
entire last chapter of River was dedicated to Burn. However, it came down
to the way to actually end River on a good note, and I didn’t want to weigh
down the readers for those who hadn’t read Burn
yet. I have to tell you, though, that it
killed me to keep this connection a
secret.
Given
this all, I had to pick and choose what of those 500 words that I wanted to
keep in River. Let me be clear about a
few of things.
One: the paragraph
towards the end of the book where Raphael talks about the Split One entering
the field is the most important for Burn
readers to know. Look at his last sentence
there.
Two: the Tree is
Metatron, the lost angel, in case you didn’t that from Raphael’s words. Metatron, the Tree (It) is corrupt as all
fuck. And does he have some scary-ass
plans for not just Felix’s world, but all of them.
Three: this exchange
in the chapter “The White Room” (do you remember the White Room from Burn?):
“That image, that burnt image of a child, was meant for a man named
Seven who might be the key to not only saving his world, but the ones on every
level above and below him.”
“Who is the child?”
Michael closes his eyes. “One who has the
power for great destruction growing within him. It remains to be seen what side
he will choose. In the end, though, the boy will burn.”
Some
interesting things coming, I think.
Will
there be a sequel to River? No. Not
directly. I think Benji and Cal’s story
has been told to the full extent it needs to.
I will smile quietly at my time spent in Roseland, but I don’t see
myself going back.
But.
Will you see some
of these characters again? Possibly.
Probably. I won’t say which, but
one or more of them might pop up somewhere else. In a different place. Where the earth moves, and the water
flows. Where the winds howl.
Where
the fires burn.
And
with that, I proudly present the original final two chapters of Into This River I Drown.
Love,
Tj
YOU
AND I
To meet my father, you’d have to go
for a bit of a drive.
Let us say that’s what you do. Let us say that one fine fall day, you find
yourself out for a drive. Maybe you’re
lost and somehow ended up taking exit 235A.
You don’t really know how you got there, but you did and you decide to
follow it, just to see where it goes.
You continue down this old highway
until you see another sign, this one letting you know that you are entering Roseland, Oregon Pop. 876. Established 1851.
Elevation 2345 ft. Gateway to the Cascades!
Roseland? This place sounds familiar to you. You think back and… was it on the news? Was that where you heard it? Something had happened here. You shake your head, unable to remember what
it was exactly. It doesn’t matter. Someone in town should be able to point out
the way back to I-10. A small beep
sounds in your car and you look down at the dash. You need gas, a little light says. You hope there’s a gas station in Roseland.
And then the town appears and you
enter onto a street called Poplar. It
feels smooth underneath your tires as if it’s been recently paved. You marvel at the buildings that line either
side of the street. It’s so quaint, you
think. So quintessentially small town
America. It seems like a wonderful
place.
People are walking on the sidewalks,
the stores looking busy. It’s a gorgeous
fall day, leaves of orange and red blowing in a brisk wind. People smile at each other as they pass on
the streets and say hello, and you think how different the big cities are
compared to this place. Back home, no
one looks each other in the eye as they pass.
Everyone’s to busy talking on a phone, reading newspaper, or just not
caring what is going on around them. Not
here. It’s seems so strange to see.
Gas station. Gas station.
Gas station.
A-ha!
A spinning sign, just up ahead on
the right.
You get closer and snort when you
see the name of the station: Big Eddie’s
Gas and Convenience. You wonder if
you’ll get to meet Big Eddie himself.
You don’t know yet that he’s not actually here, but a couple of miles
north. But you’ll meet him. In time.
You roll over a black cord stretched
out near the pump. A bell rings inside
the store. You wait. There’s a tiny garage next to the station and
there’s an older model Ford pickup truck sitting inside. It looks like it’s in the middle of being
rebuilt lovingly, one piece at a time.
You wish you had time for such a task, but life is busy. That’s just the way things are.
You hold your breath when a huge man
walks out from the garage, wiping the grease off of his massive hands with an
old rag. He smiles at you as he
approaches. The sun hits the short red
hair on his head and the red stubble on his face and it shines like fire. There’s a bit of grease on the tip of his
nose. There is something about this man,
something you can’t quite place. He
seems…ethereal. Unworldly? Not…from around here. He is beautiful, but most of all, what you
think is blue.
You shake your head, trying to clear
your mind of such random thoughts as you roll down the window. “Help you?” he asks in a deep voice.
“Just need the tank filled up and
some directions back to the freeway, if you please,” you say faintly.
He grins at you again. “That I can do.”
He walks around the front of your
car to fill the tank. You fumble with
your credit card, tapping it against your leg, waiting for him to finish. You can hear the gas flowing into your
car. “That your truck?” you ask,
pointing toward the garage.
He laughs quietly as if in on some
joke. “It will be,” he says, “once it’s
finished. Mine and Benji’s. It’ll be so cherry that it’ll break your
heart. Going to take some work, but we
have all the time in the world. At least
for now.”
You have to know. “You Big Eddie?”
He shakes his head, looking up at
the sign that circulates above. A look
of such touching magnificence comes over his face and your heart almost stops
in your chest. “No. No, Big Eddie was my friend.” He smiles quietly, but it’s not for you. It’s for a memory that rises like a dream.
The gas pump dings, signaling it’s
finished.
“Forty-two fifteen,” he says, coming
back to the window after he’s closed the lid to the gas tank on your car.
You hand him your credit card and he
moves to go inside, glancing further down the street. He stops suddenly and the smile that follows
reminds you wildly of galaxies exploding, of worlds colliding and
crashing. It’s everything, that smile,
and you can’t help the tears that burn your eyes.
You follow his gaze and see me
walking toward him, carrying a plastic bag at my side. I look like I just came from that small diner
farther up the road. People wave to me
on the street and I wave back, but my eyes are on the guy who has just filled
your tank. I reach him and you’re
pleasantly surprised when I stand on his tip-toes and plant a swift kiss on the
bigger man’s lips. You look around at
people passing on the street. Those that
have seen what you have, the few that there are, smile widely. No one hoots and hollers. No one sneers in our direction. No one looks angry. What is
this place? you think. Such an odd little town.
“I got you a meatloaf sandwich,” you
hear me say to the big guy.
He scowls. “I don’t think I’m going to like that.”
I roll my eyes. “That’s what you say now, but then you’ll
love it and demand that Rosie make it for you every day. And she will and then it’ll be just like the
time she made you pork chops and you ate them for three weeks straight.”
He moans. “They were so good.”
I laugh fondly, my hand reaching up
to touch his cheek.
“I’m glad you came back,” he
whispers loudly, looking back at you for a moment. “They gave me one of these card things and I
don’t remember how to do it.”
“Cal, I’ve shown you like ten times!” I don’t sound exasperated, just amused.
“Only six times,” the man named Cal
says, his eyes sparkling.
“Come on, then.” You watch as I grab Cal’s hand and pull him
behind me toward the store. You wave at
me briefly with the hand that has the food in it, holding up a finger to let you
know it’ll only be a minute. You nod,
entranced by the look of love in Cal’s eyes as he watches me. You know it’s something more when we go
inside the store, and you see me looking down at the credit card machine on the
counter and see Cal not paying attention in the slightest, but watching me
instead, obviously using the excuse to stand close. You start to get the impression that Cal
knows exactly what he’s doing and you smile to yourself.
You see me point out the food in the
bag and Cal sits down while I come back out of the store to you. You watch as Cal looks suspicious as he
raises the sandwich to his mouth and takes a tentative bite, only to
immediately start devouring the entire thing with a look of ecstasy on his
face. He must like it more than he
thought he would. This doesn’t surprise
you like you thought it would.
“Here you go,” I say cheerfully as I
reach your car, handing you back your card and receipt. “Cal said you needed help getting back to the
ten?”
You nod.
I point down the street. “Just follow Poplar to the intersection. Hang a left.
You’ll pass by a cemetery and after that, you’ll see the signs for the
freeway. Only a few minutes away.”
“Thanks,” you say. “Have a good day.”
I grin as I glance back at the
store. “It’s always a good day now,” I
say. I turn and walk back to the store,
where Cal is waiting for me, his smile growing wider as I approach.
Somehow, you drive away.
You head down Poplar, just like you
were told. You reach the
intersection. To the right, the road
twists into a forest and everything you think is blue. Straight ahead the road disappears up a hill
and you think of home. You turn left, as
you were told to do.
It hits you, two miles later, when a
sign that says LOST HILL MEMORIAL
comes into view. You see a figure, back
in the distance of the cemetery, rising up from the ground. It looks radiant. You don’t know why, but it
feels important to you. You must stop
and see what it is.
You park your car in the lot and
walk up the path slowly. The figure
comes into a sharper focus. You’re
distracted, momentarily, but another plot covered in blue flowers so bright it
causes your heart to hurt. A small
pocketknife sits on top of the headstone.
You briefly see part of the inscription on the grave marker before you
continue on to the figure that waits for you.
ABRAHAM DUFREE AND ESTELLE DUFREE. You wonder who they are, but you are glad
that they are together.
And ahead, here, at last, is a stone
angel. You think she’s beautiful, from
the wings on her back, to the carved hands that stretch toward you in
supplication. Your breath catches as you
see a large blue feather placed between her fingers, held there by a bit of
twine. The feather sways in the gentle
breeze and you smell the earth, deep and rich. You tear your eyes away from it
and look down to see an inscription of fifteen words below:
EDWARD
BENJAMIN GREEN
“BIG
EDDIE”
BELOVED
HUSBAND AND FATHER
MAY
27 1960 – MAY 31 2007
Big
Eddie? you think. From the gas station?
Yes.
One and the same.
But that’s not all there is.
Below that are seven more
words. Seven more words that look newer
than the ones carved above them. Seven
more words that cause your soul to quake.
I
WILL ALWAYS BE MY FATHER’S SON
You wait for only a moment longer,
there, next to the angel. She doesn’t
speak, but then she doesn’t have too.
You touch the feather just once and everything is blue. You wonder if words are enough to show the
measure of a man. You decide that maybe
they are. At least these words are enough.
Then you remember your own
life. You have things to do. You can’t be late. You hurry to your car without looking
back. You drive away and leave the
little town of Roseland behind. Maybe
one day you’ll think about this place again.
Maybe you won’t.
And that’s okay.
We’ll still be here, whatever you
remember or if you ever choose to come back.
My name is Benjamin Edward Green,
after my father, our first and middle names transposed. People call me Benji. Big Eddie wanted me to carry his name, but
felt I should have my own identity, hence the switch. I don’t mind, knowing it will always bind us
together. It’s a gift and because of
him, I was able to find my life again. I
was able to find meaning in all the colors of the world. Because of him, I was able to find my home.
This
is at once the end and the beginning.
This
is the story of my love of two men.
One
is my father.
The
other is a man who fell from the sky.
FROM
THE OUTSIDE LOOKING IN
You
are not alone in this.
Let’s leave them, shall we? Let’s leave Benji and Cal and the rest of the
Roseland inhabitants. You and I may
return here one day, just to check in to see what the people in the town are up
to. I like to think they will live
happily ever after because that is what they deserve. They all have been through so much and I want
to think that things can only get better for them. But there are others. Others that have not gotten their ending,
that have been left hanging in limbo while my mind wandered here and there.
I have something to show you.
Do you remember what Michael said? There
are infinite planes of existence.
There’s one where people can do the most beautiful things with earth and
water. With fire and wind. They can control the elements like it’s nothing. But
there is a darkness coming there. One we don’t know how to stop.
The archangel Michael was right. There is
a darkness coming.
So let us leave Roseland and fly up
through the air. Let us leave Oregon,
the Pacific Northwest, the United States, the world. These planes exist like a large building with
each floor dedicated to something different than the one before or after it. But this isn’t like a building you’ve ever
seen before, Empire State or Cantio or any other. There is truth to Michael’s words, about how
endless it is. I don’t think anyone will
ever see them all, not even God himself.
I don’t know if he’s even aware
of certain floors.
But he does know of the one I speak of.
I believe he knows it very well.
So let us go there, an express elevator
taken seventy-seven planes above the one we’ve left Benji and Cal. It feels different, already, doesn’t it? The air is different here. Time moves differently here (and as well it
should, given how many times these times have happened). This place is not a normal place and it is
not the same when as when we left
Benji and Cal.
A large city stretches out before
us. It looks familiar, and you may think
you’ve been here before. It’s not New
York City because New York City doesn’t exist this in this iteration. No, the monstrous towers of steel and glass
you see stretching miles before you make up a quite different city
altogether. This is a city where
electronic signs exist on every block, reminding everyone in brilliantly blue
writing that ALL ELEMENTALS ARE REQUIRED
TO CARRY PROPER IDENTIFICATION AS PER THE ELEMENTAL REGISTRATION ACT OF 2014. It further warns that ANY ELEMENTAL FOUND NOT CARRYING PROPER IDENTIFICATION WILL BE PROSECUTED
TO THE FULLEST EXTENT OF THE LAW.
Prosecuted? What has happened here since we left?
Come to think of it, Terra City seems
awfully quiet. More subdued then the
last time we were here. It’s eerie. It’s odd.
The City feels…well, it feels suppressed.
But even through this suppression, if we close our eyes, we can still feel
them. A man with gray eyes. A traitor
who broke a Circle. A scarred woman who
would be King. A Split One, though he is
not ours. And one other, one we are not
familiar with, not yet. Her name is
Lan-Dinh Ngo, and she might be more dangerous than all the rest, though only
time will tell. We are not safe
here. We must leave while we can. We should seek out safer places before we
make an impossible journey.
Some of our old friends are still
around, though I fear I may have left them alone for too long. If we fly over the city to its outskirts and
follow a highway, we’ll get to a small village, the name of which is not
important. What’s important is a stark
building that rises out of the ground, so much bigger than anything around it,
a monument of times past.
The Portandum Station. For
trains, an old friend once said. Not for police.
Can you feel them in there? It’s like a last bastion for a war that is
about to begin.
Here is what we see:
A woman named Amy is in a place called
the Training Grounds. She takes down a
team of Elementals in a complicated series of flips and twists. She wipes sweat from her brow and thinks
about how empty her heart feels. She
tells the team to stand up and starts the exercise all over again.
A man named Jason sits on the eighth
floor, staring out the window, wondering why he sees a thin gold pulse outside
his window, a thread leading him
toward the City. He doesn’t know what it
means, just that it’s getting louder and who it points too. He doesn’t know how much longer he can avoid
the call.
A man named Otis sits at a desk in his
room on the fifth floor, studying a book that contains word problems that are
supposed to exercise his damaged brain.
He brushes his finger over the scar on his temple and his thoughts
wander to a man that he’s been thinking about more and more lately. He wants to be fixed so that he may tell this
man how he really feels.
A woman named Edna is alone in a Council
Chamber, poring over ancient texts, trying to find any hints as to why there
are two, why she’d never known before
that there are two. She shudders and thinks of a man named Dan
Evans who has died in a forgotten tunnel far below the City. She sniffs and wipes away a tear before
turning back to the text. The answer
must be there somewhere.
A fractured man named Tick sits in a
place called the Tech Cave. He stares
dumbly at the computer screen in front of him, the zeros and ones of a
complicated line of binary code stretching out in front of him. But he’s not reading it. He’s not even seeing it. He’s lost, you see. This half of the Clock Twins no longer knows
his place. He’s always under a cloud of
suspicion, not that he blames anyone. He
should have seen more. He should have
done more. Everything that has happened,
he thinks, is all his fault. He switches
the monitor off to go find Otis. He
needs a hug, and the big guy is great at giving them.
There’s one more we should see while we
are here.
I
don’t care if It is
God, he once said. I would destroy It to find you.
It is not God, as you will soon see, but
something else entirely.
But here, on the third floor of an old
train station, is a man who suffers more than the rest. Seven.
Our Seven, the heartsworn to the Findo
Unum—the Split One—who disappeared months before in order to save them
all. His love, a man who is now fighting
against corruption that moves like black oil within him, is gone and Seven
still doesn’t know how to get him back. He
prays that it is not too late. “I will
find you, little man,” he says to the empty room, ignoring the way his voice
cracks. “I swear on everything I have
that I will find you.” He touches a
medallion that hangs from his neck, a silver heptagon that has a flame on one
side, a green tornado on the other. And,
of course, the words Es Cor Meum.
You
are my heart.
And now we know. We have caught glimpses of our old friends,
and I feel that our separation from them at this moment will not be as long as
the one before. We’ll leave them now,
not with a good-bye, but a see you soon.
We leave the Station and float high in
the air again until we are above the Earth.
But we are not leaving this plane of existence. Not quite.
There is no need to get on the elevator to switch floors, as the
allegory goes. Instead, think of where
we are headed as like a balcony to the floor we’re already on. It’s attached, but separate. Let us head
there now.
It’s not as difficult as one might
think, to get to this place, and before we know it, we’re here.
Do you smell that? In the air?
Smells like flowers.
Before you and I part, I will show you
this:
An impossible field. An improbable
field, as our old friend Big Eddie might say.
This field is covered in flowers as
far as the eye can see. But they are
silent flowers, at least for the moment.
They don’t speak of twos and corruption. They are not covered in black and they do not
shriek. They just wave and waft in the
breeze. It seems to be a sunny day.
And in this impossible field, lies a
fallen angel. It fell one day longer ago
than you and I could ever possibly imagine.
It fell from the grace of God and became stuck in its ideals. It became rooted
in its belief that God was not correct, that he was not the way for humanity. The fallen angel once had a name, and that
name was Metatron. He was the highest
ranking angel in existence until he saw the destruction of God’s ways. He sought to change things. He sought to break them. And so God cast him from Heaven and he fell
through the planes, through the floors until he wanted to fall no more and
landed in a field he himself created.
His anger overtook him and he became fused to the ground. His fury caused his skin to harden and split
apart. His anguish caused his fingers to
lengthen and sprout leaves. His corruption caused his insides to fill
with oil that spilled like sap down his sides.
The fallen angel became a tree.
A Great Tree.
And It felt, on this day, at this
moment, the humanizing of the guardian angel Calliel. And it smiled.
“What now?” asks a voice from
below. “What happens next?”
The Tree bends Its trunk and peers
down at Felix Paracel and the fallen angel smiles again, Its branches bending
upward. It does not miss the way Felix
shudders at the sight of its foliage.
Felix. Our Felix.
Split. Halved. Trapped in a place known as Infiniti Agri.
The Infinity Fields.
“What now?” he says again, and even
through the desperation, we hear his strength.
It’s almost time for him to stand.
It’s almost time for him to stand and be true.
“Now,” the fallen angel Metatron rumbles,
“we begin. If these worlds cannot burn
then I promise you that they will break.”