AMKent books

God sends a tornado, and at first it swells with what appear to be angels, but are merely the flayed skin of men. Contorted and rearranged, swirling hypnotically as the debris blasts their flesh and spreads it wide. It is dark, the sky darker, and the mass moves over the torn and destroyed, beaten to devastate. I feel that heightening touch of passion once more, and I know the hag notices this involuntary spasm of emotion. The furled tunnel of wind coils and thrashes like a child throwing a tantrum. Its destruction is not noteworthy, the humans scattered around continue their fight. I walk towards the violence of both nature and biology. The eyes of men watch as I walk into the gullet of the divine wind, consumed. The rumbling slowly fades out, the flashes of light and miscellaneous taken too, dissolve. Everything becomes void, not blackness, but truly nothing. I feel peaceful, my chest expands despite this place consisting of no oxygen and my body requiring none. The static of motion, both invisible and visible returns, and in the distance of returning world stands the golden statue. The true human, the muse to all humanity, our quintessence, flawless in dictation down to the very atoms. The hive named this being Modus, my fight with it left me disabled and ripped from the parasite. The perfect form that God left to await man, from the dawn of the universe until we arrived, such an insurmountable time. Modus waited, questioning all there is to question, watching violence in all that empty space, time move through a neutral splendour, magnificent spectrums of nature without sentience. It has stayed loyal despite the toll it was created to endure, and for that its reward has yet to come.

A reward?

Yes, the slave has earned its freedom.

As long as we exist in reality, we are a slave to it.

Before I can free such perfection from infinite imperfection, I must extrapolate its final use. I approach this muse, its form towers above me. Its hands are placed over a small pair of shoes and it seems deep in thought, unnoticing of my approach or intent.

“Modus, the perfect human. I am here to find Angelica.”

The beautiful golden statue turns and faces me, its eyes pulsating an endless kaleidoscope of conflicting human experience. To harbour all that the human is and can be, yet, still confined to the limits of human yourself is a burden beyond reason.

“You are different from when I sullied you, your hip is fixed and you carry something new.”

“I do not hold your destruction of me against you, you served The Hive, you delivered the parasite to it.”

Modus places a finger between my collar bones, and I feel the connection of it and the hag.

“You were at peace, when we all ate the fruit and God took her to its paradise. We had all played our part, and now you are here with no peace and the forgotten taste of that fruit we shared.”

“In times of peace, you must prepare for war.”

Modus removes his finger from my chest and crouches down to my level. He now places his fingertip upon his wonderful palm, the texture of his skin as smooth as pure liquid.

“I cared for many children as I waited for this war, watching them grow. The human mind is intuitive to its fate, be it conscious to them or not. They called it Armageddon, apocalypse, they all knew that this was coming. The final war, the last simulation of what we are capable of, acts of void and sunlight, all the between. I raised Angelica and I knew that the binary of her soul was a digit out of place, but I ignored it for my peace and for hers. I did not prepare for this war, but she did and in doing so she was obliterated by the light of God, which is the only byproduct of true devotion.”

“She exists still Modus, we both know it.”

“I do not wish to participate in all this evil, but you are the personification of it. I did not know it at the time, I thought you were a fool who harboured a parasite, seduced by notions of godhood. No, you are truly impure, a dirty soul, the spirit of filth.”

“Call me what you wish, but my ark is inevitable.”

Modus stands, towering above me. He now directly speaks to the hag.

“You have done well to not tell him where she is, I will free you from his torment.”

So, hag. You knew more than you let on…