Lightbreaker

Suddenly, the pure light vanished, and so physically abrupt was the loss that I gasped as if the wind had been knocked out of me. The man in the car winced as if he had been struck in the jaw, but he kept looking. The glittering light in his eyes remained. Even though the star had gone out, his rapture remained.

I looked up. At the top of the building there was a hole in the sky, a swelling ball of emptiness. It was expanding and, floor by floor, the lights went out in Eglanteria Terrace. The darkness was absolute as if the expanding edge was devouring everything it touched. As if it were unmaking the world by degrees.

With the Chorus gibbering like terrified monkeys in my head, I ran. I had no idea how far the dissolution would spread-Was the whole world coming undone? — but I fled the vacuum regardless.

It seemed like a futile, animalistic effort. As if I could outrun the disintegration of reality. But, in my heart, I wasn't ready to face this end. Not my choice. I wasn't a willing participant. What drove me wasn't the primitive part of me that wanted to live; what gave me the strength to run was the void left by the Qliphoth. I had been swallowed by this sort of emptiness once. Never again.

Etched on my palm was the faded imprint of the crown of souls. The conduit had failed as I had fallen; I hadn't the opportunity to integrate my Will to the skein of stars. Bernard's crown had remained strong. I had only broken his incantation. I hadn't taken away his connection. He was still there, at the heart of the vacuum. Most likely, the crown was protecting him. That was why he and Julian were both wearing it. They anticipated surviving this implosion.

I stumbled to a stop. I was more than a block away and, between two tall buildings, I could see the curve of darkness as the vacuum spread. A realization of its purpose cut through the chattering noise of the Chorus. Solve et coagula. The dissolution and then the final recombination. There's room for many more yet. Thoth's Key wasn't destroying the world; it was harvesting the souls within it.

The eyes of the man in the car had been transfixed by the light. Not because he had seen the face of God but, like a deer in the road, he had been stunned by the illumination. The shockwave following was the rippling gravity wave of the artifact as it sucked in all the light.

How far would it go?

The river. I had seen the Hawthorne Bridge from the penthouse window. Would it cross the river?

The wave of darkness came through the building across the street, a line of nothingness that swallowed the lighted windows and the white stone facade. It wasn't silent. I could hear the sound of the Key's harvest, a chattering echo of a thousand knives being sharpened. The sound of soul-death.

The river was my only chance. I ran, the metallic roar of the gravity wave pursuing me.

I saw the lit arc of the bridge beyond the roof of a low building and I dashed down the nearby alley. A parking lot lay on the other side, adjacent to the Hawthorne Bridge onramp. My heartbeat hammering in the base of my skull, I fled across the empty lot to the bridge.

The sound of knives was too close behind me. A car, weaving erratically as it came off the bridge, swerved to miss me, and I heard it smash into the metal framework of the bridge. If the passengers in the car survived the impact with the railing, they didn't have a chance to scream before the wave swept over them.

The shrieking panic of the Chorus reached a fever pitch, a palpable terror making my teeth ache. This was real death for them. A permanent dissolution they had cheated by remaining in my head. The rising noise of their panic told me that I wasn't safe, that the Key was on the bridge with me. Still harvesting, still sucking up souls.

I wasn't going to make the other side. It was coming too fast. This conscious realization sent the Chorus into a paroxysm of utter desperation. I stumbled, my legs suddenly numb as they tried to usurp control.

Where are you going to go? I looked back. The darkness behind me was total nothingness. Terra autem erat inanis et vacua. In a few seconds I would be enveloped by the wave as it swept over me and the rest of the bridge. I could see its leading edge riding the surface of the river below.

Riding the surface. I suddenly remembered the lake from my dream, how the surface of the water defiantly split two worlds. Above was not as below-a state contrary to the alchemical axiom.

What do you See? What do you know? What do you believe?

Questions without answers. Questions of faith. Let none henceforth seek needless cause to approve the faith they owe.

I angled for the pedestrian walkway that ran along the edge of the bridge. The railing separating the walkway from the road was only waist-high and I cleared it easily. The river-side railing was a bit higher and I went over it without any thought to form. I cleared it as fast as I could.

White-noise screaming filled my head as the Chorus felt the edge of darkness touch my falling body. They sparked and frayed as the curtain of soul-death swept over me.

I plunged headfirst into the cold water. Behind me, absolute night-bereft of stars, of light-covered the river. But it didn't reach beneath the surface. I dove deep until my strength failed. My strength, but not my faith. Then I closed my eyes, and let the hurt that must be sustained fill me.

John, I'm sorry. It wasn't your fortune you read.

I'm sorry I wasn't stronger.

The river, old lover, cold mother, took me away, her liquid hands trying to soothe my pain.

XXVIII

THE FIFTH WORK

'For no one of the gods in heaven shall come down to the earth, o'er-stepping heaven's limit; whereas man doth mount up to heaven and measure it; he knows what things of it are high, what things are low, and learns precisely all things else besides. And greater thing than all; without e'en quitting earth, he doth ascend above. So vast a sweep doth he possess of ecstasy. For this cause can a man dare say that man on earth is god subject to death, while god in heaven is man from death immune.'

— Hermes Trismegistus, The Corpus Hermeticum

I dreamt of bees, honey bees circling enormous flowers. The stalks were thick with strange veins, and I could see the rhythmic pulse of these ropy conduits. The heads of the flowers were voluptuous circles of curling white petals with tender pink centers. Pulsating cores of limpid light that blinked a seductive pattern, a Morse signal read by the bees.

I lay on my back, cradled in a bower of thick grass, and I watched a fat bee with yellow sigils inscribed on its thorax fly past. Its face was pink instead of black, a tiny human mask fitted over its insectoid visage. Nicols' face, smooth like a plastic mold, like a cheap mask that captured shape but not personality. The human-faced bee buzzed in tempo with the flickering heart of a nearby flower, and as it approached, the white petals curled, encouraging it closer.

The Nicols bee kissed the pink center and the flower convulsed, its petals whipping inward. A pink creature broke through the dome of the flower's face, and its long pink proboscis struck the bee in the center of its plasticine forehead. Pink tendrils connected the ibis-hound with the flower and, as the tiny soul-sucker drew out the essence of the bee, these tendrils strained and pulsed with the vacuuming rhythm of the ibis-hound.

I fled the dream, fled the field of soul-devouring flowers, but the bee's buzzing panic followed me. The sound increased in volume as I fled through flickering spaces of stereographic visions. The sound became Nicols' death