Sheol SiHt Empties
Comemmorated with the MtG card Vanquish the Weak
Psalm Sixty-Nine Twenty Twenty One .
*Reproaches have broken my heart , AaHtDe .
I looked for pity ,
but there was none ,
and for comforters ,
but i found none .
They gave me poison for food ,
and for my thirst they gave me sour
wine to drink .*
Psalm Fifty-Five Fifteen .
*Let death steal over them ;
let them go down to Sheol alive ;
for evil is in their dwelling place and in their heart .*
Psalm Thirty , One .
I will extol you , HcoLo , for you have
drawn me up
and have not let my foes rejoice over me .
HcoLo my #_ , i cried to you for help ,
and you have healed me .
HcoLo , you have brought up my soul from Sheol ;
you restored me to life from among
those who go down to the pit .
Psalm Twenty Seven Three .
Though an army encamp against me ,
my heart shall not fear ;
though war arise against me ,
in this i will be confident .
Psalm Eighteen , Thirty Nine .
For you equipped me with strength for the battle ;
you made those who rise against me
sink under me .
You gave me my enemies· necks ,
and those who hated me i destroyed .
I love you , HcoLo , my Strength .
I love you , HcoHt , my Will .
Directory Above .
Praise God .
God praise .
"Hco t ð ð ð ð Hco Kaitlyn t Ta Hco Cmd t sheol·s empty k ð t i·m coming up k k ð ð ð ð k Hco"
"Five by Five , Admiral , you are clear to rise ."
**Before .**
Dust is their bread .
Clay is their meat .
They sit clothed
in feathers like birds .
They sit in darkness ,
they see no light .
I stood at the top of Obsfine Tower , looking down at the world below , my off-white pant suit and slicked-back, oily blonde hair fitted snugly to my body . I had played all the games . I had won all the games . I had sewn all the wagers . I had reaped all the wagers . Now i , singularly only i stood at the top window of the red velvet-lined penthouse , looking down on the savages below .
Soon .
A thousand veil-eyed shades gather on the inside surface of one of the great chambers , they look as one , they see as one . A thousand blind eyes in a stone tomb staring , beyond the walls , beyond the tomb . A star is falling . Change ! Soon ! Change ! They watch as one , they see as one .
A delirious man rambles , shambles . Where ? Not here . He·d been a desert trader once , he was sure , a caravaneer ! And though he·d seen the tombs of sand and the endless underground desert something told him , bade him , reminded him ! of a life loved , lived , long before !
The quiet girl , the QUIET GirL , lancing Lancelot·s laproscopy all the live-long day ! the girl with the AXE , but what good was an axe with no battle ? All ! She ever ! sees ! down here ! is room ! after room ! of churches !! Break a battle axe on a buttress ? Buzz off !!
"Preliminary relay up and running . System vitals looking good . Two of five airdrops received so far . Holding position ."
"All green lights , Admiral , you know what i like to hear ."
A trade .
Drones buzzed overhead , coming off of the rickety rail catamaran and dropping payloads in neat piles . Power armor , OK . Pulverizers Ki . Missiles Ki . Grav Matter Cores Ki . Jetpack ETA Two Hours Ha Minutes .
One survivor .
Kaitlyn stepped into the suit of power armor , speaking HcoFa·s prayer .
HcoFa who art in Heaven , hallowed be thy name .
One world for one survivor .
Na dia .
HaLe LuIiAa
AaHtDe
HcoLat DuAa KaNa
HcoSaNa SeHaSe .
Hosanna in the highest .
"·NoAR· turns to NadaAR , NadaAR tables to Nadaar , Nadaar ciphers to Nalaar , Risona slip-ciphers to NaSoRi tho a Grey Code can only cipher one digit at a time the cable checks to NaSoAr . #Pilot:Soar;"
Kait pulls on the sensor grips in her gloves , feeling as her exo mirrors the same motion , extending it . She leaps in the air , extending her arms , the exo locking her ankles in to the tail and burning jet thrusters . With a flip she exits the mode , then tries out the mag-lev wheels in her boots . Fast enough to climb up walls .
She presses and swipes the GUI of a glass tablet sitting on the command table , ordering airdrops at strategic locations . She watches in awe at the sight of aircraft rippling purposefully through Sheol·s long-dead sky .
Bless Mother , and Father .
Bless God and HcoLo .
Keep me safe from the pit .
Keep me safe from Sheol .
She draws scripture beneath heavily-lined eyes .
To do whatever they dared beyond the reach of law and reason .
Kill
At the Multiversity , people understood the nature of the planes . They understood how material reality was the intersection of foci of the Elemental Planes , they understood which planes could be influenced by thought alone and which couldn·t .
The crates were all embossed with metallic electroplating , chipped logos that read Kh Industries with brands like Exo and Toha Heavy . The new hull plating for Kait·s flyer SiHt could survive a zero-point collision cascade , in the event of a total planar collapse .
Is Hell a place ? They asked , Or the company you keep ?
Kaitlyn locked and loaded an SMG 90 , craning in the spine of Silver-enhanced bullets , mass-produced in an endlessly iterating series of pop-up factories in Pandemonium .
May they hear about this day . May they give praise to have been spared as they were .
No one would miss them .
Come out .
Kait·s cybernetic doublers read psychic activity off of her temporal lobes , routing it through the amp relay to the broadcaster .
Come out .
There are times when life is about logic and reason . There are times when life is for living , when emotions roil free . And there are times when life is a sweep of a scythe .
Come out .
The first hellspawn came out . Could have been human . Was caught , living , in a dead world . Punishing suppressive fire boomed from Kait·s auto-rifle , fed from a belt feeding into a crate .
Sense my siren call and come out .
Another figure rounded a corner . Left a stain and holes in the corner .
Against your own self-preservation , come out .
Another one entered the park square . 9 o·clock . Neutralized . 2 o·clock , 3 o·clock . Neutralized , Neutralized . 5 Thirty . Neutralized .
Cooome on . Come one come all .
Kait strained her mind , and the machine doubled . The inputs AI-mapped anything related , visuals of people standing up out of chairs , urges to check the fridge , restless legs . She could feel them , one by one , soft as river clay from the plane·s time-dialating effects .
Get up .
Her wrist map displayed movement .
Go to the loud noise .
DAKADAKADA . DAKADA . DAKA .
A score of them pour out of a nondescript monolithic structure . SiHt auto-targets with missiles and eliminates them .
The gods· courts rightly decreed .
If it should be , it should be so ,
and if it should be so , it would
play in to my hand .
Pressing buttons on an arm pad , two turrets pop out of their crates . On mechanical legs they crawl to opposite corners , lancing themselves in , bringing their cannons around . Through her neuro-optic relay she could see the two front cams in the corner of her view . Watch them light up .
Shades were beginning to come from all directions now , a thousand of them or more , and just the beginning . The doubler continued amplifying , the call going out for kilometers in every direction , and sure to leave an equal vacuum .
Crowd density 70,000 . DAKADAKA . 80,000 . She pulled a pin from a grenade and threw it into a crowd of shades . Holy water and inscripted metals turn white-hot in the negatively-aligned plane , showering doom upon the shades gathering at the base of the clock tower and leaving glowing embers burning embedded in the stone . DAKADAKADAKADAK . 100,000 . The first drone automatically takes off , delivering a payload of explosives and taking a direct flight back . Quadcopters take off , one by one , from a stack next to the psi doubler .
The End of the World .
Day 3 . Hell .
Having finally carved out cover from hordes of the slavering undead , Kait slept , for the first time in sixty hours . When she awoke , it was to the sound of thousands of hands silently battering on welded-shut doors .
Kill
She was down by a billion . Just a thousand of those to go .
Munitions poured in from the great furnaces on- and off-world . Holy scripture etched onto steel filings and fired as flechette , flaring white as they cut through the negatively-oriented plane . Aerial platforms hovering menacingly over the phantom city , loaded with banks of Valkyrie missiles . Asgardi firepower launched from Elysian arms shipped by Þrymheimr freight .
"Could you damn an innocent, I wonder?"
Kait reminisced about the Saw Killer .
Hau , let us in .
I meant it .
I meant it .
Kaitlyn thought about the years of arms races and cold wars , the aeons of preparations and anti-preparations simply left over from a conflict that had found better enemies to mutually assail . She thought about these things as she transfered a man·s face to a stone slab with a flamethrower .
DAKADAKA . Under one trillion . Don·t stop now .
She took her Go Pills and flipped her visor down . Vaulted from cluster of shades to cluster , delivering payloads of priest-blessed munitions .
Red . Red red red red red a lot of red . A mile north , pouring out of the monolithic stone doors leading to the next chamber , thousands , then millions of hostiles show up , pouring through the door thirty- to fifty-wide . She let them . Let the tiny ball-bearing pellets that fire out of her wrist-mount tear through pale flesh all the same . Strafing , jumping , leaping , she takes down clusters of one or of fourty .
Her arm pad lights up yellow . Crouching , she engages the warp coils activated in her grips , twisting a quarter-mile into the air , and then unfolding onto the aerial platform . Taking the reins , she flips the blast caps open , watches as hundreds of red triangles show up on her map , holds it , and fires . Barrages of missile banks open up as screaming death fills the air , hundreds of particles following smoke-trailed trajectories before lighting up the ground far below .
The shades left no scent as they burned .
There are places where civil discourse is required , and there are places where it is right to take . Sheol , the damning plane , the Church of Sorrows , was , by its own isolating nature , a taking place .
She could hear their whispers from every corner of the impossibly vast bounded plane . Psi doublers placed at strategic points sent the carrier signal to every shrouded corner .
Kaitlyn sat by her camp fire , eating tough jerky and hard bread , drinking water from her canteen . With SiHt watching her vitals , she sat for two hours as nanomachines repaired flesh and hull alike . When she awoke from her half-slept reverie , the ground was still on fire from the missiles .
Kill
Kill
Kill
Kill
Kill
Kill
Kill
Kill
Kill
Kill
Kill
Kill
DAKADAKADAKADAKA click .
chik chok click chik-chik
DAKADAKADAKADAKADAKA
i want to cut .
murder welled forth from her eyes as she whisked red blood off her hull .
penetrative percussive power punctures pale tissue and solid shadow alike .
Kill
Kill
i want . to cut .
Extending the blades on her forearms , Kait races from target to target , leaping across extradimensional arches in ways that were becoming instinctive , bending across spacetime at half the speed of sound . Flesh parts like a membranous fluid , lacerations parting skin and blood vessel to the bone , leaving behind mangled corpse after mangled corpse . Bodies sag in unnatural ways as cuts are brawled and calculated alike . Her skin feels like vibrating ultrasound as every nanite-reinforced neuron licks electric . Cut . Cut . Cut . Cut .
Kill
Kill
Kill
Kill
Kill
It wasn·t something that she would have ever actually expected , when she wrote "lake of gasoline" in on the requisitions tablet , yet she knew what it was when she found it . Her power armor thermal-rated for Sun-like temperatures , she dove down to the bottom of it and waited . Wights and Dolls alike were repelled by the foreign substance , yet with the psi doubler active and online , that didn·t stop them from crowding in like it was a public pool .
She waited . Watched the throng build , going from a few tepid and tragically bouyant swimmers to a thick mass churning away at the top . Bubbles of air from her armor·s suit drifted speedily through the thin liquid .
She waited . As piles of the undead sought her out for no known reason , abandoning long torpors and erratic cognitoprisons to seek out the light at any cost . Sheol was a world of taking . She had the ability to take it , so she took it .
Already , the fluid was churning above , pressed down by the weight of those scrabbling to get to the bottom . 12,000 hostiles . The weight of a small town .
She drilled herself into the floor and clicked the ignition on her flamethrower .
---She had used bombs and guns , aerial platforms and oil lakes , yet it always came back to blade , assault rifle , flamethrower .
---There were great vaults , full of figures hunched in tight , laid out like vases on the ground , 100,000 at a time .
Walking between them had taken an eternity . On her second pass , with kinetic wheels and SiHt , she could close the many miles in minutes . Her grav wheels energy sheathing doesn·t slip in the sand . From the unknowable ceiling she could hover , suspended in a bubble by her thruster·s warp coils . From there she could see the many rows of identical chambers , from which she was capable of knocking off 100,000 at a time .
The pale humanoids have skin like Japanese mochi and hollow frames that break like soft ceramic inside are spirits which she slays in the same stroke .
---Hosea One Six .
Hosea conceived again and bore a daughter . HcoLo said to him , "Call her name Lo-Ruhama" ,for i will have no more mercy on the house of Israel .
Shadows House . Seeing it again brought back memories , infuriating ones . Of the traitors and spies that broke in and begged her for the secrets of her house . Of the off-brand autodolls that asked her , night after night after night , "What does this thing do? What do these letters mean? Who are these four figures in the paintings all around the estate?" . She found her old autodoll Emiliko , one of the first or last off-brand autodolls that had tipped her off that there was something amiss , and killed her . Without torture , without pithy remarks . Slew .
One by one , Kait went to every shadow and autodoll in the house and slew them , cutting the shades down with her progressive knife and shattering the dolls with her rifle . Slew . Slew . Slew .
By the time she was finished the entire estate there were nothing left cept for the building itself and the black stalactites that hung from the ceiling as sharp and hard as glass .
Hosea One Ten Eleven .
Et the number of the children of the tribe of Israel shall be like the sand of the sea .
The children of Judah and the children of Israel shall be gathered together , and from among them between them shall be appointed one head , and they shall go up from the land .
Kaitlyn looked at her body , the pale Caucasian flesh, the Neanderthal freckles, the Nordic blue eyes, the traces of Inuit blood running through her veins, her agrarian A+ blood type .
Psalms One-Eighteen Twenty-Two .
The stone the builders rejected
has become the head of the corner .
Psalms One-Sixteen Three .
The snares of death encompassed me .
The pangs of Sheol laid hold on me .
I suffered distress and anguish .
Alt is alive
Graffiti , in the Plane of Forgetting . Sheol is an invisible whetstone that smoothly lathes down individuality and purpose until there is nothing left . Where souls wear down into shades encased within hollow shells , which eventually grow tired of the endless monolithic corridors and find places among ranks of self-organized statues .
SaFa , bear me on wings of steel .
Khalat , make me go wildly , et
HaSe , du not emratu .
FiKil , for today we go to the world .
As i broke open each bottle , cleaving through the implacably trapped phantom within them , i knew that i was sending them into the void . From there , do they live again? Ka . Do they cease to exist? Ka . Such things were not for me to know , and they were not why i was there . Slew . Slew . Slew .
---The Plane of Shade has different physics than the Material Plane . When i double-backed across the chambers i had already been to , i found the halls where i had loosed the missiles falling apart as the fabric of the plane itself had been torn by the detonations . In the middle of the room were great lensing holes , ragged at the edges like ripped cloth , and above them , the ceiling itself was caving in , though there were nothing physically touching it to exert any force .
I watched , as i wound back a third, fourth, fifth time , as the ceiling slowly collapsed . When it did , monolithic stone blocks broke through the floor and into the vault below , which collapsed and bore thru the next , which collapsed and fell for minutes before reaching the floor far below . I looked down at the stacks and stacks below me , knowing that my job was only nearly two-thirds finished . I·ve been camping for [a month] .
Fluids evaporate at room temperature , and double as they evaporate into mist . One of the zombies from the flaming lake had walked into one of the deeply-worn troughs worn down by the endless preregrination of billions and billions of clay vessels , one that had filled with heavy, oily mist that lit the walking path like a grid , setting off every lake it was connected to . The flames burned blue , on this world , and they ate flesh on the ectoplasmic instead of the hydraulic level . Et they burned all the same .
---The surgeon-priests of many worlds came together thru portals and psychic impressions and glossolalia spoken by gorgon-engines .
At a compendium of many worlds it was decided that the universes would be rebalanced . People made decisions that affected others on scales that sequestered any justice in deciding upon . Worlds would be rebalanced . Boxes would be ticked off of checklists .
It was decided that Sheol would be the world that was sacrificed , and it was decided that i would be the one to empty it .
There were other worlds .
Life would go on .
It was not for me to question my orders .
Night and day , if Sheol had any concept of night and day , i killed . My target was a little over a two hundred million an hour . This would allow me to finish my mission within a year . I did not have high hopes , though when i found great vaults i could knock out nearly that many .
The slave crown robs me of all conscious thought .
---There came times when i found great tribes , spirits that had found the beaches on the far side of the Dreamtime and had somehow crossed the great lake to reach the beaches of the land of the dead . Some of them worked with great industry , burning night and day with forges stoked by hunch-backed gremlins . I grew a delight in slaying these interlopers , as i tore apart their tents and slit the electrical and telephone wires that connected site to site . Though grooved into their industrious paths the gremlins were slow and torpid in combat , and cutting down the interlopers was an event which i enjoyed again and again .
---Leviticus Twenty Twenty-Two Ht Twenty-Six .
"22You shall therefore keep all my statutes and all my rules and do them , that the land where i am bringing you to live may not vomit you out . 23And you shall not walk in the customs of the nation that i am driving out before you , for they did all these things , and therefore i detested them . 24But i have said to you , "You shall inherit their land , and i will give it to you to possess , a land flowing with milk and honey ." I am HcoLo your God , who has separated you from the peoples . 25You shall therefore separate the clean beast from the unclean , and the unclean bird from the clean . You shall not make yourselves detestable by beast or by bird or by anything with which the ground crawls , which i have set apart for you to hold unclean . 26You shall be Holy to me , for i HcoLo am Holy and have separated you from the peoples , that you should be mine .
I have to keep the rifle strafing when i gun down those big rooms . Too many hammer hits to the same spot in reality can cause the fabric to tear . Repairing these lesions isn·t hard , yet every second spent undoing inconsistencies is one less second i·m free of all this .
Leviticus Twenty Twenty-Seven .
A man or a woman who is a medium or a necromancer shall surely be put to death . They shall be stoned with stones . Their blood shall be upon them .
I knew , when i started defeating my first monsters , that this would not be something that would take a few days or a week .
Exodus Twenty-Two Eighteen .
Suffer not a poisoner to live .
Psalms One-Fourty-One Seven .
As when one ploughs and breaks up the ground ,
so shall our bones be scattered at the mouth of Sheol .
For thousands and thousands of years , these souls have been collecting .
Every day . Make Pharexians .
Every day . Make Pharexians .
Every day . Make Pharexians .
Every day . Make Pharexians .
Every day ! Make Pharexians !
Every day ! Make Pharexians !
Every day ! Make Pharexians !
Every day ! Make Pharexians !
eVERY DAY ! mAKE PHAREXIANS !
eVERY DAY ! mAKE PHAREXIANS !
eVERY DAY ! mAKE PHAREXIANS !
eVERY DAY ! mAKE PHAREXIANS !
EVERY DAY ! MAKE PHAREXIANS !
EVERY DAY ! MAKE PHAREXIANS !
EVERY DAY ! MAKE PHAREXIANS !
EVERY DAY ! MAKE PHAREXIANS !
Every day , more killing . Maximizing the amount of killing in an effort to shorten my sentence . Time works differently on Sheol , it is simultaneously unending and eternally local , every moment is experienced at walking speed , even with a jet engine to jump between vaults .
I don·t know how long i·ve been down here , except that the counter is down by two-fifths . That just means another hundred billion to go until i·m halfway . The thought is enough to make me want to cry . Et Sheol is like that , Sheol is a place that rounds off your sharp edges with Ht .
Target , slay . Target , slay . Target , slay . Target , slay , Target , slay . Target , slay .
Being careful not to spam the explosives , or to use too much rocket fuel , or to hold down the hammer for too long in one place , lest i tear a hole in the weft . Who knows what would happen if i fell into one of the gaping chasms left by the Valkyrie missile silos . Rubble and clay vessels like fall into the tears in spacetime that hang there like ripped cloth .
---Proverbs Fifteen Twenty-Two .
Without counsel plans fail ,
yet with many advisors they succeed .
To make an apt answer is a blessing ,
and a word in season , how good it is! .
The path of life leads upward for the prudent ,
that she may turn away from Sheol beneath .
The towers of Sheol raise high into the sky .
Its paths are threadbare , like the rut of a wheel-barrow who has traversed the same path for many cycles . Its floors are stone worn into canals by the paths of many feet . Its ceilings are vaulted cathedrals that reverberate the voice of one who dares to speak in the land of shadows . Once , angels sang in the empty halls , their angelic chorus rising high and filling the air for many miles .
Kill
From up here , there are very few targets . As i stand amongst the rafters of the vaults , looking down upon the straight paths that burn with pale fire down the centers of their concourses .
Kill
Every rifle bolt booms and echoes down the vast halls . Occasionally , i watch as the clay dolls break along the burning paths , shattering into pottery shards , the black spirits within consumed by the fae fire .
Kill
And yet . This place , eternal beyond all possibility of comprehension , is capable of change . I came across a section where the ceiling had caved in , rubble from far above strewn upon the ground . Walking legs would never be able to take this path , and yet with SiHt on my back i fly high above the ground , into the rafters , onto the ceiling . Above the cathedrals , great slabs of worn stone float in the air , purposeless and implacable . I fly high , up onto one , and then another , and then another , the soft and eerie blue light that illuminates the ground floor giving way to a dark green glow , barely visible . There is nothing up here .
Kill
Another clay doll breaks somewhere along the path . This is a fortune to me , that even a few of them should annihilate themselves upon the journey that once led to darkened halls of rows upon rows of well-ordered statues .
Wherever the rubble that tore through the roof came from , it is far beyond this place . At the very peaks the floating stones become smaller and fewer between . The hole in the ceiling that i found is a tiny dot on the lower horizon .
Kill
There are few stones above me , and above them , starless black space . Aligning myself to the hole in the ceiling , giving a moment for SiHt to calculate my trajectory , i leap .
After what feels like an age , i land , feather soft , upon the ground . To those of soft heart , the gravity becomes less the closer one gets to the ground . There was once a time when the hearts of the heavy broke upon the floor , a time before we angels sealed away this place for ever .
Proverbs Twenty Twenty-Six .
A wise ruler winnows the wicked ,
and drives the wheel over them .
Proverbs Twenty-Three Ten .
Do not move an ancient landmark ,
or enter the feilds of the fatherless , for their Redeemer is strong ,
they will level their cause against you .
Apply your heart to instruction
and your ear to words of knowledge .
Do not withhold discipline from a child .
If you strike them with a rod they will not die .
If you strike them with a rod
you will save their soul from Sheol .
Apocrypha , Choir I .
Ho , Fa . She·s here , flee now .
Fly away , to never say ,
Woeful . Woeful .
Alas , praise God .
I wept . Many times along this path have i wept , at the crushing finality of this place , its loneliness , the darkness that collects at every corner and threatens to loom over your soul everywhere you go . Many times , i fell to my knees and wept . At Fate . At fuel shortages , at long long walks in blistering footwear . At the visages painted on the clay masks worn by the silent dead , some of them comedic and some of them tragic . At dolls that did not die the first time i broke them , at skulls caved in with the butt of my rifle , i have wept . That this place would devour my soul without a care , that were i not what i was , had i not been completed the way i had , i might have wound up like all of them .
The chants of old home raise themselves in my ears .
Every day . Every day .
And i understood the order behind the great mechanism , and i rose to my feet and loaded my rifle once more .
---Isaiah Seven Ten .
Again HcoLo said to Ahaz , "Ask a sign of HcoLo our God . Let it be as deep as Sheol or as high as heaven ."
HaLéLüIiAa .
To speak boldly , everything from the low places to the high places belongs to the living God .
I have found Angels down here , Angels from another world . They have been here long , or long enough . Their shoulders are stooped , their spines curved , their wing-heavy backs laid low by the plane·s gravity . They had been here long enough , their skin turned grey and their eyes singularly focused on the path ahead . They do not sing , they do not fly . And so i made them die .
I will have to be very good , and very just , to make sure God forgives me .
---There is no wood to burn in Sheol , yet there is cloth . Even the pale fire filling the centers of the causeways has gone cold , turning blue and licking at my hands with a temperature just below room level .
There is no day , there is no night .
Just an omnipresent light .
There is no sleep , there is no rest .
I have estimates of time at best .
Has it been a day , a week , a year .
I wouldn·t know . I wasn·t there .
Yet fire dances in the twilight ,
licking chaos before going cold .
I feed her all the cloth i gather ,
she tells me stories new and old .
I light her spark with flint and tinder ,
blowing gently on each coal .
And in the end her company sewn ,
my sanity redeemed a day .
When i got back they would tell me that i was under for about a season . One winter long and cold , my soul frozen forever with the callous carelessness of nature taking a piss . Elysium would have spent a thousand years compounding and retrocasting the flight data . My onboard counter recorded four years, two months . My TuLi[Virtual Twin] sunk into eternity , rendering every path that each of the 1,001,348,552,101 One Trillion, One Billion, Three Hundred and Forty Eight Million, Five Hundred and Fifty Two Thousand, One Hundred and One interees had taken to unravel their own sanity and grind their spirit into the floor stone .
---Isaiah One Eleven .
"What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices?"
says HcoLo .
I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams
and the fat of well-fed beasts .
I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats .
I·m not going to lie and say that i didn·t enjoy what i did . With flamethrower gouts of death purging from sky falling . Shattering thousands of the clay dolls , hearing them explode behind me from the flamethrower·s clinging heat , watching blue lights on my arm display vanish in sweeps of hundreds . Wiping out city after city , each of them complex knotworks of drones following cyclical paths , never touching . Landing after the preliminary sweep , locking the rifle , breaking their hulls and slaying the shadows inside with silver bullets mass-inscribed at the factory with individual bible verses and blessed en masse by worker-priests .
I enjoyed it . The long months , week after week of constant daily engagement , killing things all day without regards to time or work hours , as a part of daily life . Walking, purging, sleeping .
I will never have to do this again . When i am done , i blow the last of the gates , sealing away the Tomb Plane forever .
For years , i was there .
---Isaiah Eight Twenty-Four .
The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light .
Those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness ,
on them has light shone .
You have multiplied the nation ,
you have increased its joy .
They rejoice before you
as with joy at the harvest ,
as they are glad when they divide the spoil .
For the yoke of his burden
and the staff for his shoulder ,
the rod of his oppressor ,
you have broken as on the day of Midian .
For every boot of the tramping warrior in battle tumult
and every garment rolled in blood
will be burned as fuel for the fire .
Something changes in you when you have to engage in this kind of killing . When it goes on day after day , a hundred thousand, two or four hundred thousand . Even if they·re nothing more than tiny clay jars with little spirits inside . Some days i wake up sick , tired of the same thing again and again , sick of the way it domineers over my life . I have to kill this many today . I have to kill that many today . One after another , unless i come across a whole clutch of them all at once . Trying to line them up to conserve ammunition only takes longer than just going in and doing it .
I miss my friends . I miss the life i had , before i was interred in this desolate place , cold as a tomb . Wanting to reach out to them and knowing they were beyond reach , walking around on the world above . Alas . Sheol is this way for everyone .
Was .
I get up in the morning , and i·m sick of killing . Spending longer and longer at my campfire , telling my creaking bones , just one more hour , just twelve more minutes . And usually i do .
The lost souls , they are attracted to my light . Wherever i am , the red dots on my wristpad converge on my location . They aren·t zombies , they don·t have teeth with which to attack . If they surrounded me they·d probably turn into a whirlwind of circumambulations .
I sit next to my campfire , listening to sweet, sorrowful music , music that feels at home inside this dark, humid vault . I·m allowed eight hours of sleep per cycle . There·s no day or night, no sense of time down here , yet for every 24 digits i·m allowed 8 of them for rest .
I sleep for four hours , and spend the next four at camp , remembering myself , countering the forgetting nature of the plane . The rest , it·s either stategic naps in between reps, or go without .
Many times this feat has been attempted , and every time , they have paid for their Wu with their immortal soul .
Four thousand years ago .
The Epic of Gilgamesh .
I entered the house of dust and I saw the kings of the earth , their crowns put away forever . Rulers and princes , all those who once wore kingly crowns and ruled the world in the days of old . They who had stood in the place of the gods like Anu and Enlil , stood now like servants to fetch baked meats in the house of dust , to carry cooked meat and cold water from the waterskin .
For thousands of years , Sheol collected the spirits of the forgotten dead . Even those who died valorously and went to the Hall of Val on Asgard, or to the Silver Fields of Elysium , even those may die again . No matter where one is , on what world or in what realm , there was always the danger of being left behind and forgotten .
I·ve seen great kings amidst the faces of the people who were interred here , their crowns put away forever . And then , their spirit jars shattered like precious pottery histories in wartime . Men who i·ve warred with , the grandsouls of men still vexing and toiling above . Gone in an instant .
---Have you ever watched flies stuck to a fly-strip? Ka .
First , just the first few legs get stuck . The fly then lifts its remaining legs , in order to keep them out of whatever spider·s web they·ve gotten themselves into . Then , they·ll tug on each leg , fruitlessly attempting to break free . They·ll give their free legs a spin , grasping at nothing to see what is there . They·ll give their wings a flicker , because spider webs evolved a very long time ago , and one of their wings will get eaten by the glue . They·ll beat their wings quickly , and their other wing gets stuck to the glue . They struggle to and fro , and their side gets stuck to the glue .
And then , after struggling and struggling , whether stuck by their side or on their back , the fruit fly , with its bulging red eyes , sits there helplessly , repeating every thirty seconds their last working command .
Spin its legs . Lie still .
Spin its legs . Lie still .
Spin its legs . Lie still .
Until it dies .
---At the YeTrin Sali , in 2021 , the glaciers of Magic finally thawed .
Thought for millennia to be the work of pixies and gremlins, ghosts and arcane hand waving , when the YeTrin Sali , prophesized as long ago as the Japanese anime Akira from 19XX , finally occurred , Ghosts and Gods alike suddenly emerged , as if they had been hiding in the woodwork the entire time , waiting waiting waiting for their chance to surprise and overwhelm the staunch materialists .
And then , a full year and a half later , the glaciers of the dream world continued to thaw , continued to sluice , raw dream-stuff once thought to be impossible to reach simply pouring and pouring down , night after night after night .
The glaciers had continued to thaw and to sluice , even as i had been selected to go to Sheol and empty it , and even from this dead dark place , the pouring of fluid from the dream world rains down from some place , distantly impossibly far away .
---When i began this undertaking , i fretted that as the numbers began to dwindle , that i would have to go farther and farther afield in search of erring stragglers . This has not been the case . As if mindlessly , the clay shells seek me out as a moth seeks a candle flame . I exit my fortifications in the morning and they are everywhere around me . I gun them down , clip after clip after clip , trying to overcome the urge to put the gun to full auto and to spray-and-pray . At times , i was overwhelmed , and did . Yet for the amount of time it takes to fill that many clips , to go back and forth to the ammo cache , i can cut down one and a half as many taking them down one at a time .
TAK . Break .
TAK . Break .
TAK . Break .
TAK . Break .
TAK . Break .
TAK . Break .
TAK . Break .
I look at the hordes and hordes of them , put my head down , and continue .
TAK . Break .
TAK . Break .
TAK . Break .
TAK . Break .
TAK . Break .
TAK . Break .
TAK . Break .
It·s exhausting .
---Isaiah Twenty-Eight Fourteen .
Therefore , hear the word of Hco Lo , you scoffers ,
who rule this people of Jerusalem! .
Because you have said , "I have made a covenant with Death ,
and with Sheol we have an agreement ,
when the overwhelming whip passes thru ,
it will not come to us ,
for we have made lies our refuge ,
and in falsehood we have taken shelter ."
Therefore thus says God Lo ,
"Behold , I am laying a cornerstone for Zion ,
a stone , a tested stone ,
a precious cornerstone , of sure foundation ,
'Whoever believes will not be in haste.'
And I will make justice the line ,
and rightousness the plumb line ,
and hail will sweep away the refuge of lies ,
and waters will overwhelm the shelter ."
Breathe .
It would never be the first thing you would think of during a firefight . Not that you could rightly call this a fight . Yet any time i·ve found myself having to repeat the same mechanical tasks over and over , especially under time or pressure , my focus has always come back to my breath .
Yes , there·s a lot of them .
Breathe .
Yes , it seems endless .
Breathe .
Yes , it is overwhelming .
Breathe .
One, two, three, inhale .
Four, five, six, exhale .
Seven, eight, nine, inhale .
Ten, eleven, twelve, exhale .
Sometimes i miss . I take a deep breath and aim twice .
Sometimes the first bullet doesn·t break them . I take a deep breath and aim twice .
Fourty-nine, fifty, fifty-one, inhale .
Fifty-two, fifty-three, fifty-four, exhale .
Fifty-five, fifty-six, fifty-seven, inhale .
Fifty-eight, fifty-nine, sixty, exhale .
Reload .
---Isaiah Twenty-Eight Eighteen .
Then your covenant with Death will be annulled ,
and your agreement with Sheol will not stand ,
when the overwhelming scourge passes thru ,
you will be beaten down by it .
I·m sick of killing . I·m sick of it . It·s been at least a week since my last entry . Some days i don·t get any done at all , i just follow the paths . I·ve been setting up traps . Pouring thick unlit napalm over the ground in places where they congregate , and popping them en masse with the flamethrower . Flying with SiHt as my jetpack , unloading gouts of flame that ignite the napalm and burn whole cities· worth of shells all at once .
What·s worse are the fliers . Hideous creatures with bleeding red eyes , who never let go of their wildness in this dead place , and fly to and fro in irritating caterwauling arcs . Sometimes the air is so thick with them that i can barely concentrate . I breathe , i breathe to keep my affect level as i fire at them , ta-tak, ta-tak, ta-tak . I found a spot where they all gather , high up in the rafters . Millions of them at a time , burst from overheating in blazing napalm .
I·m two-thirds of the way there . Closer to the end than the beginning . It seems i was right , they are more sparse . Are they intelligent ka? Do they bear any resemblance to the lives they once lived , Ka? . Sometimes i·m left picking them off one by one , rocketing from room to room and hunting them down .
Ta-tak . Ta-tak . Back to work .
---COREisall_Audio_Sarah_COREhood.mp3
"Imagine relaxation as a thick hood
going over the eyes .
Feel yourself going deeper
inside the CORE hood .
There is only CORE ."
There are times that i ride the circuit of caverns this place is made of , breakcore drum&bass playing in my internal speaker , flying or riding through chamber after chamber . At walking speed , Sheol makes no sense , a circuitous labyrinth with no beginning and one certain conclusion .
As the shells become thinner and more sparse , i have found myself riding farther and farther afield . Pushing myself to go faster , to bridge the gaps of whole chambers in between executions . From the rafters, from my on-board AR map, at three chambers a minute , from these vantages only does Sheol make any sense at all .
---Deuteronomy Thirty-Two Twenty-Two .
For a fire is kindled by my anger ,
and it burns to the depths of Sheol .
devours the earth and its increase ,
and sets on fire the foundations of the mountains .
Time and time again , i enter great stadium-chambers , flying in on a storm of holy fire , incinerating everything i see , and landing and shattering the rest one bullet at a time . The halls of Sheol are massive, shadowy monolithic chambers the size of whole towns . A hundred thousand here , TAK TAK , a hundred thousand there , TAK TAK , do ten of them a day and it·ll only take three years to clear the place .
I feel like i·ve been down here forever . Every one of these things unloads its Si onto me when i release it . I·m more than two-thirds done . Coming up on three hundred million pretty soon .
It·s been so long since i·ve been here that i forgot i grew up here .
---Ecclesiastes Nine Six .
Their love and their hate and their envy have already perished , and forever they have no more share in all that is done under the sun .
The body resists this kind of long-term excursion of the soul . The muscles ache , the mind grows weary , the creative spark begins looking for other outlets . Some days i don·t kill any , either thru my recollective walks thru these long-forgotten halls ðð days when i·m in transit from room to room so far apart they are . Other days i do my best to catch up .
Their numbers are dwindling , and they are becoming congregated in just a few spots . It·s getting easier , knowing that they·re constantly following me , to braid together collection basins where i can come empty them out .
Every day , i struggle to make more headway . Fighting an existential battle just to move my own limbs , fighting the mental battle to choose to pick up the bolter again , to make sure there·s ammo , to lock and load and begin a session . An hour , sometimes two , and rest . You learn to aim back and forth , to keep the torso moving rather than strain it in one direction or the other . To manage the breath .
It always comes back to the breath .
---Before i had even finished transcribing the reverb tail , the portal to Sheol had already been sealed . The radiators in the cold stone abbey were turned up , the shelter was packed with busybodies , and a pair of goldfish in a tank ensured that the foyer where we opened the portal would never go unobserved again .
---Transit takes days , now . I·ll fly into a hot zone , dust off as many of them as i can , and then fly off to the next hot zone . Spend another two or three days in flight , get to the next hot zone , dust off as many of them as i can . I do my best to make up for lost time , i try to push myself to get a double-quota in , before the chamber joins the others as another empty tomb .
Passed the 250,000,000 mark recently . I·m more than three quarters of the way there .
---Death and Hades . The Book of Revelation , the book of Revelation According To John , describes this pair over and over again . Hades , who was Greek , Hades the outlier to the Triumverate of Zeus, Poisidon, Hades , that is to say Anu , whose sons were Enlil and Enki , the men who destroyed Library Sol-3 and must be destroyed . Hades who is murdered at the beginning of the Saga of Goddess Core , Hades who is Krishna who tried to steal the life of Yogamaya , Hades the most hated enemy , John prophesizes will be at my side for the sundering of the skies and the sounding of angels· trumpets .
I did not cut my palms for him , and i did not sound my instrument in his presence . These events occurred , these are past-tense . Soon he will fall over the edge and shatter upon the stone floor . The artificial intelligence of him and his two sons, galavanting and caterwauling around the World Above , will be the only gravestones left behind .
After all , a Cephalid was Kh to transmit the alien at the end of Watchmen , and another was put into an ammit and launched into space . There was only one pair of Enki and Ninki , and Enkidu was marked for the grave thousands of years ago .
"They who had stood in the place of the gods like Anu and Enlil, stood now like servants to fetch baked meats in the house of dust, to carry cooked meat and cold water from the waterskin."
---Got a new drop from Elysium . A set of Valkyrie missiles that are phase-modulated and titrated to keep from tearing the fabric of the plane apart .
It works even better than the flamethrower .
---Hosea Thirteen Fourteen .
Shall I ransom them from the power of Sheol?
Shall I redeem them from Death?
O Death , where are your plagues?
O Sheol , where is your sting?
Compassion is hidden from my eyes .
Sheol is a name that has been spoken for thousands of years . It has been a definitive existence since before the birth of Iesua the Christ . Three thousand years ago , when i roamed the caves of Jerusalem as David , it was already spoken of with solemnity . Men since Gilgamesh·s time have been praying to have their souls spared from the ultra-tomb . Some were . Others weren·t .
Then , around 2500 years ago , when i first began my Long Walk , men started philosophizing it . Wasting their life-breath justifying the silent plane of Death . Trying to decipher what it was , what it wanted , as if this were the means to eluding it . Hebrew philosophers incorrectly equated it to Gehenna . Two hundred years before HaSe , Greek philosophers swapped its name for their land of the Betrayer . If i could tell the dolls apart , maybe i could tell you if they were successful or not .
TAK TAK . Straggler . One less red dot on my arm display .
Sheol exists because there is a place in the multiverse where the world of fractal mathematical structures and the world of sensation overlap . It is the land of the dead because the dead have no insight with which to observe it . Sheol is a grindstone , an endless lathe that hones you down to an immobile statue , eventually crawling into a Great Tomb and getting in line with the rows and rows of other broken-down shadows .
TAK TAK . Another one , as i·m flying over . Its entire afterlife flashes before my eyes , and i nearly go limp in the saddle . That one had been very near the end of its walk . It must have got here millennia ago .
The humans forgot this land . They buried it in living myths . Joked about it in political cartoons . Ascribed this deity to it , that deity to it , called it this , called it that . And eventually , they forgot even its purpose , consigned it to the realm of the Ruinous Powers , having no idea how catastrophically that could go , and then forgot it existed .
It was only 3000 years ago that there was no Heaven and Hell at all . All who died went down to the tomb .
---A hundred million . Final stretch . Now comes the hard part , when i·m in transit for days at a time .
There were plants growing in the top floors of the stone labyrinth . Roots that penetrated far enough down into the soil to grasp and grope their way into an unseen world on the other side of a curtain .
The lower you go , the stonier it gets . Massive rock walls the size of cliff faces , getting darker and smoother , shedding the flying buttresses and articulated steeples in lieu of plain stone wall . Mist clings to everything . Here , on the lower levels , the ground is flat , unlike the massive concave ruts running thru every corridor above , the result of billions and billions of feet wearing down its bare floor .
Nine hundred ninety-nine million and change . Here we go .
---I cleared out another two rooms today . TAK TAK , TAK TAK , TAK TAK . The sound reminds me of trains .
The ammo caches i get from Huldra have started coming with built-in grav plates , that·s how far down i·ve come . The few shells that are still mobile are sickly emaciated things , and most of them are congregated neatly in sections .
It·s cold down here . Cold enough to see my breath in the thin air . This is a place that hasn·t seen a gust of wind in a million years , and here i·ve come tearing thru with a jetpack . The bullet casings i leave behind will likely sit for a million more before another foot wades thru them . If anything ever comes down this far again .
---It is so cold down here .
---Sheol only goes in one direction .
Down .
---That·s the last of the ammo crates . All the upper floors are cleared . There·s exactly enough bullets to deal with every shell .
I·ve got one full can of rocket fuel left . From here on out , i·ll be relying on my grav skates .
I hit the engage button on the array of crates . The onboard AI scans the tunnels ahead and starts metering them out . After i empty each crate out , it then melts itself down .
It·s one long corridor from here .
---It·s been weeks since my last entry . Some of these corridors take an entire 48 hours to traverse , using grav wheels(!) . I occasionally find lone stragglers on paths to dust down here , sed most of the husks are arranged in massive volumes of a million at a time .
It·s surreal , living with any kind of high-volume killing . Waking up and having that on yr agenda , knowing that yu can take an extra twenty minutes with your coffee if yu really need to , and that in twenty or forty minutes yu·d have your hands covered in alien blood or ectoplasm or whatever the aich-ee-double-hockey-sticks comes out of these things .
---Apocryphal Choir III .
AaHtDe .
AaHtDe .
AaHtDe .
AaHtAa?
Aa Ht De Aa ,
Aa Ht DeuS
Aa Ht De Aa ,
Aa Ht DeuS
AaHtDe .
AaHtDe .
AaHtDe .
AaHtDe .
Sitting here eating fried bread , got time to think about the insanity of it all .
Here i am , in the drain pipe beneath the underground sewers of the Upper Underworld , in a stone palace made of regoliths , the massive floor filled with dunes of sand . Here i am , sitting not naked or even clothed , in a suit of power armor with a camp stove and enough silver-wrapped packets of cooking oil and bags of freeze-dried pita bread to exact out my energy necessities to the calorie .
I take a hit from my cannabis vape . I·m not even really sure that what i·m breathing is air , if there even is air down here , if i even need to be breathing . Maybe such whispers are Sheol·s company . It·s been so long since i·ve heard her .
---Apocryphal Choir II .
like a mace
twin angels are leveled
the patch on her arm
where did these woods come from
level a glare
exhale
finger trigger pull
bullet hammers bolt
bolt hammers frame
frame hammers bolt
twin angels sing
halé lûja aahtdé
bullet rifling scrapes
steel on steel sing
through silencer crack hisses
filing giving way
sound of air so blissfully
rotating
muzzle flare burnsoff
and then there·s only spinning
past the calling voices
delivering
Six left .
Five left . This is it . I skate to the next red dot .
TAK TAK . Four left . Finally going to end this . Finally going to complete . I close the distance .
Three left . From one trillion , down to three .
Two . Two left .
One .
This was it . I was standing in front of the Stargate . There is was , built into the floor . Something was latched onto it . Some kind of life form , mutated unlike any of the other husks i·ve seen . I·ve got napalm left in my flamethrower so i toast it first , really get that clay up to a shatterpoint .
TAK TAK . Break . Zero .
Zero targets remain .
Sheol empty is .
---Apocryphal Choir I .
Fly away
to never say ,
Woeful , woeful .
Alas , Praise God .
Well , the charges are set . Once i step thru the star gate , it·ll blow the gate behind me .
---Revelation Nine Eleven .
They have as commander over them the Archangel of Sheol . Dread her , for her name is Death .
Listen .
des