A Word on Wordiness

Enjoy.

Actually I can't be content with just one. This section of the epic is the corniest and most forced one one there is (you will quickly notice the part where I most explicity and inexpertly wove in the theme of religion as senseless violence and fratricidal destruction), but, immediately following it is the one where Iesous goes into hell, and I'll be fucked if that one isn't hella awesome. So, perhaps the proper word on wordiness here is "gaman" which means, grin and bear. Suffer through. Stick it out. Nut up and be a man. All of the above apply to this book five (?).

(A brief refresher: Iesous recently talked to his mom who told him he was born for greatness, he nearly realized the true power hidden within him but then he left his village to sit in the woods for a while, and then Triton killed himself and his loyal sea nymph, Joanna. The scene opens upon Iesous in the woods, waiting for the apocalpyse of the Olympian Gods to fall on his head)

Time went by, and there was no retribution.
The little village in the trees held its lease longer
than any who lived there could have hoped, and
the storm they resigned themselves to bracing for
did not come. The woman in the house at the head
of the road had felt the great surge of energy that

was the release of Triton’s soul, and for some time
she feared the end was near. But as it became apparent
that the apocalypse was averted, again she hoped
that her boy would find his feet walk
them along his path into the sky.

What the woman didn’t feel, however, was
the assimilation of the energy bolts by the
amulet around the boy’s neck.

He was sitting alone, contemplating a means
of entering the netherworld of Hades’ Dominion,
when suddenly he was struck by what seemed
a giant wave quivering with electric
currents. An immense power rushed into
the amulet around his neck, and it overpowered
the symbols etched therein, glowing the deep
blue of the open sea.

Any lesser being would have died immediately,
as no normal mortal could successfully absorb
a god. The boy, however, was far from normal,
and what would have been a fatal seismic
oblivion to any other, he hardly noticed. So
deep was his concentration that he sensed
nothing spectacular until his gaze turned to
the pendant ‘round his neck and he saw it
burning blue. Seeing and feeling it around his
neck, he knew that Triton was dead. Nodding
to himself, he continued to puzzle out how he might
unbar the gates of Dis, and slay the keeper of the
dead.

So long he sat there seeking a means that
an observer might have thought him turned
to stone. Upon a rock he sat, elbow upon
knee and face upon fist like a piece of art. He
passed up plan after plan, each more impossible
than its parent, and still he had no idea how to
proceed. He was nigh upon ripping the earth in
two to create a clear path to the deeps when he
felt some persons approaching. Nimbly, he jumped
off the rock, and hid himself behind a nearby tree.

Proceeded by angry cries and cracklings

in the underbrush, two men burst into the clearing,
grappling and gouging and yelling incoherencies,
in between gasps for breath, harsh whisper
of a knife being drawn from a leather sheath, two
men entered the clearing, one advancing upon the
other with the offending knife upraised. The other
had a bright sword strapped to his thigh, yet it
remained secured within its scabbard. It was
clear that an argument lay between them,
and it came to the boy on their loud voices.

“ Would thee not see the light, however brightly I shine
it in thy eyes? Does not the glory reflected by the
tip of yon knife convince thee of thy folly?”

“ No blade could dissuade me. You are blinded
by the might of your gods, whereas I see
clearly through it. May they smite me where I
stand, I will not worship the despotism they represent.”

“ Still no, brother? Would thee not
change thy mind even knowing that thy
impiety will likely invite the wrath of god
upon our family? Would thee not change
for that?”

“What god worth praising slays believers
for the crimes of the wicked? Are
the bolts of Zeus so treacherous? So difficult
for him to aim? I should think not. He
cares not for those who love him, until
they disrespect him.”

“ I will stand for no more of this. Blasphemy
flows from thy mouth like poison, and
every word of it stings my soul. Draw
thy sword, and we shall see whose
position the gods favor.”

“ You would fight me, brother, for them?”

“ My god is my life.”

“ I will not draw. Strike me down if
you must, but I would not fight you no

matter how many hosts of heaven
stood at my back.”

“Then may thee meet thy scorned maker,
and suffer his most severe punishments for
all eternity. My lords’ wills be done.”

With this final utterance he drove the
wicked knife between his brother’s relenting
ribs, twisting it until it ruptured his stolid
heart. Before the black wind closed
his eyelids, the slain man said to his brother,
“ I hope only that your gods do not forsake
you like you have forsaken me. Eternity is a long
time to spend reliving a betrayal from one so dear.
Peace, my spirit quits it mortal casing, and I can fly,
at least for a little while.”

Just so, he died. His spirit fled the ()
hindrance of its flesh and hovered above
for a moment, bewildered at the separation.
The other man saw this not, nor the angry
rash spreading across his forehead like a brand,
and wiping his brother’s blood upon his coat
he walked away. The boy, young Iesous,
saw both though, snapping his fingers at the latter,
but in seeing the first realized his solution to
the puzzle of the hidden underworld.

Quickly forgetting its former limitations,
the tint flowed away from the scene
of it’s body’s end and flew out toward
the distant sea. Leaping up, the boy
pursued, his feet cutting the wind as he
outpaced it. The soul took, as his condition
made quite easy, the path of least resistance,
and the boy had to take the country in switchbacks
to follow. His feet nearly burning stripes in the
ground, he sprang over boulders and down
steep slopes in a furious effort to keep up

with the speedy shade. Closer and closer
the two came to a giant promontory over
a turbid sea, and still the boy followed,
fast as ever. Suddenly,
as it appeared the shade would plunge
headlong into the sea and down to some
watery end, it stopped and stood a modest
hole before the edge of the cliff. The boy
stopped to watch. After a moment, and with an
air of resignation, the shade entered the hole and
did not return.

It was clear to the boy that he had found the
entrance to Erebus, and so he made much
haste for the hole. Upon reaching it’s gaping
mouth he jumped in, landing on a stony floor.
There was no light in the cave, yet the boy
could make out a giant door of mysterious
metal, worked all in flames and bones.
At its center loomed a helmed god
on a sinister chariot, his hands reined to a trio
of dragons, their maws open in the act of a throaty
scream. In his other hand he claimed a sceptre
mounted with an obsidian skull. The gate to the ever-after,
firmly shut in the boy’s face.

A calm power rose again in the boy’s blood,
and for the first time since his father’s home,
he drew back a bit the shade over his spirit.
His eyes blazed like the apocalypse, and he
clenched two mighty fists. Like a savage
earthquake he struck the gates of hell, and
they crumpled before him as a child’s
castle will before the sea. They fell to the ground,
and the sound they made when they struck
was like a lone bell, dark and without an echo.
Once they had settled, he stepped over them, and
descended into the tangible darkness of Hades.

And scene.