The Duelist

It spreads unseen, a pathogen undermining the apparently-static overlay of form that covers the nature of things. It replicates, propagates itself through unseen and undetectable vectors. It changes the host, transforms them into unique expressions of itself, myriad versions of the same thing.

We are all the same fucker. All of us are the same thing.

All we need to do is wake up and realize it.

Sometimes I forget that things weren’t always winter.

It understandable, I suppose; the evidence of the way things were are hidden away, the way old photographs and letters make their way to the back of our drawers. It’s easy to judge the present solely by things that are evident only in the present.

Season change. That is the nature of seasons, to pass from one to another in an unending, unrelenting progression.

I remember what you were like at the beginning of autumn. You were beautiful, more beautiful because your beauty was fragile, and because I understood that fragility. I wanted to shelter you from the coming winter, if you would let me.

But you pretended as if the creep of the cold across your lands was insignificant, basing your judgment solely on how imperceptible its advance was.

I can wait. That’s the part that confuses people, you see - my ability to lie in wait, seemingly motionless, for so long that it appears I have frozen in place.

Frozen. Curious choice of words.

Even winter passes. Until it does, I will lie here, coiled, waiting.

I am a magician.

I am not your fucking personal assistant.

That is all.

Arrogant, smug, intense, moody, vengeful, cruel, selfish.

Self-assured, confident, focused, sensitive, tough, ambitious.

Who is this persona? From where did he emerge? And why was someone completely different in his place a year ago?

So mutable. So ephemeral. If the measure of truth is permanence then this self is untrue.

Cue Final Fantasy X OST.

All the news in the world, all the movies and plays and comics and books… not just the fiction section, but even the how-tos and the get-rich books… even philosophy and cookbooks…

They’re shared stories. They’re thoughtforms that have replicated and disseminated throughout the mental network. That’s why fame is so alluring — everyone knows your story. Everyone wants to tell their story. That’s why the true listener is so attractive; they are so rare.

That’s why the hypersigil works, you see. Even if it’s coded information, bits and pieces of your story spread throughout the network, concretizing it, manifesting it, so mote it be. Astral space is informational space; both spaces are more conceptual than perceptual in nature.

What does it mean to be invisible, then?  To wipe out the telltale mark of ‘you’, the ego that pretends to be all of you? What if you could write anything into the story of reality itself, from the outside? What if instead of branding it with sigils and the fires of gnosis, if instead one discovered a way to weave into the story of everything whatever plots or persons or locations one wished? What kind of magic would that be?

This is my story.

I’ll tell you why.

It’s because a fragment of my soul is in her. I left it there. I gave it away to her. I can take it back, if I wanted to.

I don’t want to.

She can have it. She can take it with her when she decides to leave.

The castle of you.

It’s built on sand, you see. Built from sand, upon sand. It looks beautiful but it’s only billions of fragments held together by nothing stronger than capillary action, its form imposed upon it from the outside by a mold.

There is a small dam, also made from sand, protecting it from the onrushing waves. But you can only hold the sea back for so long before it completely overwhelms you.

And it will. It is only a matter of time.

But then, why would you expect your castle to last forever? When you’ve known all along that in the end, it’s only sand upon sand.

It’s interesting to watch the two of you fight. You just clam up and he knits his brow and seems unable to solve some riddle you’ve posed him. Sometimes I have no idea why it happens. I’m looking at you two and suddenly I realize that you’re arguing. And veiling it poorly.

Your fights end when you relent (and tell him the answer to your puzzle) or when he figures it out. And then you’re both back to leaning on each other and being sweet.

Then it hits me. Someday, he won’t be able to answer, and you won’t relent. And that will be the end.

Tall, sheer mountain faces. A translucent bridge of many steps.  Mist, massive white clouds. Snow.

Draw cloak over head, walk on. The eye of the world ahead. The city of sun and stars behind, below.

Wings straining against the cloak. Walk on.

Warmed by the warmth of her memory. The warmth of dreams of her.

A dream within a dream, self-referential recursion within more recursive patterns. There are patterns at work here, patterns that tell the same story over and over again, with new details, switched in and out by the caprices of memory and forgetfulness.

Always walking on. Always moving forward. Always something approached, always something left behind.

To obtain, something of equal value must be left behind.

Humankind cannot gain anything without first giving something in return. To obtain, something of equal value must be lost.

But in order to fill a form with the necessary essence or force, the force that is already indwelling must first be emptied. A vessel must first be emptied before it can be refilled.

It begins as a point, an almost infinitesmally-small bubble in the viscous mixture.

Then it expands, a spherical vacuum, emptying a space that was once saturated with the unwanted substance. Before it has the opportunity to collapse, however, before the space is refilled with the same dross, the alchemist fills the void with the desired essence. Suddenly the vessel contains the element that it previously was too full to hold.

The form begins to vibrate with a different force, and the reactions take on an altogether different path of causality. The very nature of the totality has been altered, has been made to proceed in the manner that the alchemist desires, though the form of the vessel remains unchanged.

To obtain the desired result, something of equal value was lost. But it was not lost as payment; the old was simply discarded to make room for the new.