Swords of Steel Omnibus

by Howie K Bentley et al.

  Behind a crusted portcullis left half ajar lay the throne of The Fool King entombed with what remained of his various treasures. What once must have been an opulently appointed chamber was now reduced to ransacked disarray. His glittering objects were plundered, yet he and his cohorts’ skeletal remains were intact and organized in a diorama scene which was presumably customary of some long-forgotten Neolithic funeral rites for nobility. Desecration was all around except for the ghoulish sumptuous feast in which they remained suspended. My clairvoyance offered glimpses of harried robbers nervously hoarding jewels and unable to do their work for anxiety of his empty eye sockets bearing down on them. He had been interred with a legion of warriors and whores on skeleton horses which also cast reproving and cursing eyes upon the intruders of the ages. Some of them held brittle blades while others clutched parchments of absurdly anachronistic obligations and deeds. The resplendent austerity of his tomb did nothing to resonate with his general disposition in life nor legacy. He was a lowly worm. He was a true louse amongst men. He was inflated to capacity with a sense of self-importance. His presumptions peeled the skull beneath his grin to simple men, which made him an impotent leader. His stately countenance rendered him soft in their eyes. I returned gaze with those eye sockets whilst standing there transfixed in their story. In my peripheral perception I saw his eyes bright as they were in life and exchanged intent gaze with the liar. In our shared trance the veil became transparent. The cancerous Fool King was ultimately destitute, yet still he jealously clutched his gold while he died. He passed into history the forgotten and tearful jester. He moved towards the great black hole and into final singularity making his strife on earth insignificant. He was only a bit of grave dust in the wind. Sand in the nitrogen cycle. The spell of the liar’s eyes was lifted. I spiraled into a fourth and final descent. I fell into the inner void of the burning black star’s core where dwelt Ebezura.

  Her name was Ebezura the Soothsayer of Tales. She was a waif with a skein. The palmystress appeared famine-stricken as she wove word and yarn. She was a conduit to the channel of the gods. All about her were ritualistically-placed purple-black candles and votive figures depicting a hoary snake goddess. She possessed an encyclopedic mind with the ability to eloquently tell winded epics, as if casually relaying the facts in common discourse. She had been waiting for me eternally. She greeted me with fungal tea and she shared tales relayed to by her oracle companions. She sang Cassilda’s song of Lost Carcosa. She spun her tangled mess and told me tales meant to leave men insane, sadder, and wiser. She then told her own saga in detail, albeit in a broken lyrical dementia. It told tales of the saintly days of yore as well as of things yet to come. It was the tale of all of us. It was Ebezura’s Tale and it went as such:

  “Phantom Black from far beyond is lost and never free

  Look below to find the truth once tossed into the sea

  We are the ones who wage the wars, we are to be, and were before

  Into the night at morning light, we are the suns who lost the light

  We wayfarers want your steel, join us!

  We are the future, please believe

  Our prophets tell us that when we die death’s a journey

  No pearly gates or burning in the fire

  Bones are breaking under hoof

  Dormant monsters longing for a chance to live again

  We pulled you from the mire and we gave you life again

  Now give yourself for battle as the search for truth begins

  Meet the masters guiding your fate

  Eyes are burning as they crack their whips

  See the forgotten with frozen stares

  Longing for the light that was never there

  A world on its knees still can’t believe

  The moans of the rising dead ride on the breeze

  When all things come to an end it’s a chance to live again

  The sound of the raging winds calls to me

  The winds call to me for a chance to die and be free

  And the light at the end of the tunnel is just a gate to reality

  And your life that flashes before you is the start of eternity

  We soldier into blackness beyond the ivory lights

  We brave the bleak hereafter and exit on through time

  We’re riding on The Never’s storm and march amongst the now

  The crushed remains of cursed things lie scattered in dust clouds

  We are the only ones when time begins

  We only cut the ties to get a chance to live again

  We’re always wandering and will withstand ever passing time

  It always circles back to where we began

  A trial fire raging and it’s nigh the time for why

  Witch or whore, no matter no more, who’s been brought here to die

  She shape shifts in the night world, a place so steeped in myth

  Seize her rose, remove her clothes, she’s marked six sixty six

  Now you’re going to know what it’s like to go below to total dementia

  You’ll make the final mistake and end upon the stake

  Me and you, my only friend, were here, and here again

  The sun and the moon were the same for a moment in time

  No angel hides away for long

  Bad angels don’t fly away but do fly away from home

  Me and you with the best of life

  A princess in the nexus of time

  We want it to be all the things we foresee

  We hate when it goes differently

  You know if they knew all the things that we do...

  They would pray for us both fearfully

  Imprisoned in a world of make believe, my mystery believer

  Mystery believer, at the edge of the river, you can run forever

  Mystery surrounded you from conception into death

  Would you call it a lie or would a miracle astound you?

  Where are you heroes now that this world’s come full circle?

  Winners and losers still kill and sell their souls

  West of the sunset cities one waits for the end of time

  While on the horizon, soulless rulers sign the hammers down

  She’ll wake from a slumber so sweet to kiss the dawn when dark angels sing

  She’s a forgotten myth spreading her wings

  You’ve thrown out your gods so return to the dark

  Willing souls speak soft into the darkened light

  But the love they’ve always had remains unproved tonight

  The Master of Evil sends a message to us

  Eyes in the darkness are staring at you and you fear all the evil they’ll do

  On the ringlet clouds of dawn the stranger came

  The mists were rising and the moon was dying

  Dark angels bowed to pray

  It made a dark and lonely place to hide itself

  Demise was spiraling and the raven crying

  Yet no evil could be traced

  A sleeping village wakes to a strange presence

  Familiar at side beyond the quagmire

  The spell poisoned the air

  The bishops held their ground with cross and spike

  The windows boarded, their sorts were sordid

  All life seemed doomed to die

  We’re prepared to stand and face the evil in this place

  With the cross and gall of flame, its power compels you

  We’re prepared to set ablaze this place where you like to play

  Psychotic mobs set to lay waste with intent to kill you

  Beneath the mystic graves it waits to wake

  Macabre collection of spirits resting

  Will spree once found again

  Beware their charming ways and the things they say

  The devil’s armoire holds toys of torture when evil wants to play

  You came to see the underworld and you know the bargain indeed my girl

  You’ll find light so white, so now down you go
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  You’ll have the best of the Earth and it will be yours alone

  You silly child, I’m wild, it seems you’ve fooled yourself

  I’ve finally placed you in an urn upon my shelf

  You were the whore who wore the clothing of a nun

  There’s no excuse for all the evil games we play

  Kidnap the unicorn and take its horn away

  You want some wisdom and I’ve got some to lend

  I’ll give you some of mine. I’ll bestow the kiss of death

  When the lost cities are finally found and the unicorns are all slain for their horns

  We wait for the winds of the end in a wasteland of woe

  Bastards with the power to destroy won’t fill the world with fear evermore

  As red skies ignite we’ll take into flight to strike down the kind and the cruel

  We ride Armageddon with our wings ablaze as approaches the age of our rule

  We’re the angels of the fire and we’ll burn you to our hearts’ desire

  You’re all on the run for the night is ours

  We’re a mystery and a reason to believe

  We’re a promise kept from the torn page of history

  We bring fire and death. We leave with nothingness left

  Some thousand epic trips ago we passed the word to see who’d show

  The curse dispersed to far off lands and we journeyed there to make our stand

  We drank from ale horns

  Dark star’s fury lights up the sky and shines on through the night

  Travelers and dead men fought by our side

  I am possessed by thoughts that are not my own

  They’ve lead me far to things unknown”

  I awoke many years later in a peaceful mangrove. Pussy willows dreamily swayed in the high tide. Catfish cavorted in spectacular leaps beyond the breakwaters. The sweet grass and cotton were high in the distance behind me. Not unlike Rip Van Winkle, I was surely missing asleep for generations though I felt virile and ageless. As the blood flowed more steadily I came to realize my condition was less than the serene exterior I comforted in. My exposed skin was savagely bloodied from some erstwhile insect molestation. A foot was sodden in a puddle nibbled at by pollywogs. My life force had dripped and coagulated at my feet where it was imbibed by the pulpy ground. I stood to face a world sadder and with a troubled brow. Throughout life I was a followed and haunted person. A destroyer demon cast its looming dark upon me and delighted in holding me down. Extreme evil plagued me with night terrors and in the waking hours attracted to me poltergeist companions. It was called upon and would not stop until it ran its course which constituted my lifespan. Early in life it introduced me to the four ghouls of Revelations. As I passed into the final light, there at the tunnel’s end materialized the vision of an ancient orchard where-through a serpent slithered. Four cadaverous siren nymphs splayed themselves upon an ancient tomb on which were carven the three letters EVE.

  That Than Which There Can Be No More Terrible

  By Michael Scalzi

  Dr. Dendrite’s lectures on the philosophy of religion were his specialty, and in the eyes of his graduate students, would likely be his downfall. His recitations of medieval arguments for God’s existence, the problem of evil, and his own highly original theodicies had become the frequent subjects of academic debate, gossip and playful imitation among the university’s graduate and elite intellectual populations. Yet as impassioned as Dr. Dendrite’s apologetics were—extending far beyond a seasoned professor’s dutiful defense of the text—they also retained the capacity to muddle his otherwise unbreakable concentration and crystalline logic, rendering him as obstinate and single-mindedly obsessed as a ranting politician. During these philosophical fugues he was given to frequent fits of fallacy, eruptions of erroneous argumentation as well as rhapsodic rants, both pedestrian and pedantic—all of which he’d have easily dismissed as sophomoric or sophistic under less intellectually imperiled conditions.

  Medieval theological arguments, steeped as they are in the principles of Aristotelian and Platonic metaphysics, manage to employ their share of quasi-logical “rabbit in the hat tricks,” i.e. arguments that either bamboozle the reader with “pretzel logic” (the twisting of relationships between ideas and definitions until they appear to produce a valid conclusion), or ask them to accept a few simple premises and then hit them with a conclusion that appears to follow, but at the same time goes far beyond what they promise. Both of these techniques tend to leave the reader vaguely dissatisfied with the conclusion drawn, yet strangely unable to articulate why.

  Ian Fichte was a proud member of the “fallacy finders” club: an informal distinction denoting the young brilliant minds found in the front row of every philosophy lecture, scrutinizing every point of discussion to death with overly-literal interpretations of text, nit-picking minute points of logic, and generally attempting to ruffle the mismatched tweeds of stalwart professors. Such biting criticisms as “anachronism,” “confirmation bias,” or the ultimate coffin pin in any ethical position: “the naturalistic fallacy” (the claim that no ethical term can be explained by mere approval or disapproval) were among their daily arsenal. The standard modus operandi for young philosophers had become negative: an attack on all preceding positions. Rather than creating new ideas—a practice which the academe had deemed trite and nigh-impossible at this late stage in the shelf-life of secondary research, it was sufficient to simply react—to present a contrasting pale. After all, it’s the positive claim that ultimately bears the burden of rational argument. Defense of a negative is not nearly as difficult a task; it’s simply a lack of belief—a healthy skepticism requiring no further defense.

  Ian sat in the front row of every one of Dr. Dendrite’s lectures, remaining particularly attentive during the recitations of theological arguments. While the rest of the class sank into its customary dogmatic slumber, Ian’s shrewd sensibilities were titillated by the hylomorphic doctrines of the Scholastics and Neo-Platonists—both subjects he had mastered previously by methods both formal and autodidactic. The subject of today’s rant was the formal syllogistic proof of God’s existence, otherwise known as the “classic ontological argument” as formulated by St. Anselm of Canterbury in his famous Prosologium. And a rant it was. As Dendrite set up the premises of the 11th century argument he paced the half empty hall with a military pomp and swagger that resembled the goose-step; footnotes and corollaries jettisoned from his tongue, fanning off in all directions like philological shrapnel. Contrary to the cold, dispassionate flavor of the original argument’s form, Dendrite’s interpretation, or perhaps more aptly put, performance of the argument far exceeded St. Anselm’s original in both depth and character of presentation, and all but confirmed Ian’s long-standing suspicion of Dendrite’s crypto-thespianism. He questioned how the rest of the students could manage to wistfully doze off or stare at their smart phones with such a spectacle before their eyes and ears. He found the ontological argument fascinating, and Dendrite’s rendition of it only buttressed this opinion.

  The argument itself, to Ian’s mind, was a good example of a logical “rabbit in the hat” trick. There was something seemingly trivial about the way the conclusion landed in the lap of the interlocutor, giving her no choice but to assent to its positive claim, yet unable to resist a gnawing sense of gut-skepticism. It seemed a preposterous and arrogant piece of reasoning on several levels, yet it was extremely difficult to articulate even to one’s self exactly what was wrong with it. Atheist Richard Dawkins, in his pseudo-philosophical bestseller The God Delusion compared it to a childhood playground anecdote, in which one child plays a little trick of the “na-na-na-na” variety on his classmates. English philosopher Bernard Williams simply called the argument “invalid” (i.e. the conclusion does not follow from the premises). Ian found the argument to be valid, but perhaps unsound, in that the conclusion does appear to follow from the premises, but the truth of the premises is highly debatable. Dendrite’s mo
derately augmented version of the argument was presented as follows:

  “Premise one simply states that it is a conceptual truth that God is a being than which none greater can be imagined—that is, the greatest possible being that can be imagined. Whether or not you are willing to accept that there is such being, the argument asks only that you admit that the idea of the being than which there can be no greater exists as an idea in the understanding. It is a concept that you can clearly grasp and understand.” And indeed it was an understandable concept, thought Ian, whether or not it is a believable proposition in “reality” (i.e. outside of the understanding).