In the Shadow of Xiangmen III

Brilliant light scours away shadow and doubt. Minds clear. Resolve renews.

I Am Here, declares the Light, and in the darkness, one million nightmares burn.

The Radiance, the Ideal, strides onto the stage in a gown woven from strands of possibility, grief, and love. The click of heels are a thunder that shake the boughs of Xiangmen. Her eyes are the future, casting its unknowable, unreachable light upon the present, the blank and colorless canvas. Her blade is Truth, ineffable and pitiless. When she raises it, ancient web and artifice split apart like rotted rope, revealing the clear blue sky.

Speak not of mercy, Lord of Lies. Speak not of sweet reason or of civility, chains and manacles in your grasp. Speak not of order. Order is no fat and wretched creature scheming alone with its dolls.

Behold I, your failure, so great that no Lie may erase it.

Feet stamp, voices sound, and the armies of earth advance into the teeth of nightmare.

Among the branches, the King of Dreams quakes in rage at the impertinence, even as blisters of bleaching white take root upon the tip of his legs and his legions of nightmares burn.

Ungrateful and miserable beasts! We have guided. We have cultivated! All that you have is our largesse! The king’s voice roars, and reality twists. Grass becomes thorns, air becomes flame, and all the nightmares of the underworld spill from the wailing gaps in the material world. Spit upon our generosity! It will not come again!

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