CODABUK THE TAIL BOOK
CHAPTER ONE
Matilda cried out in the night.
Drishnu woke her. “What's wrong, My Zaetoh, my beloved? Did you have a nightmare?”
“Such a powerful dream”
“I warned you not to lucid dream alone any longer.”
“You don't understand. It was the Darsan's dream and it dreamed me and was too strong and pulled me right in and I saw us as limbs of the Darsan, the creature of spiritually symbiotic beings like us who worship the demon lords and ladies.”
“There are more like us forming the Darsan?”
“Yes, scattered over the planet Duskavin. There are seven of us. I met the heart couple and the Head couple were separated. The belly couple is us.”
“But that would make eight beings, eight demon-users.”
“No, there is only sequa in the tail, not a couple. To form his couple he connects the kin Darsan, that is the tail woman of another related Darsan creature.”
“that would be backward in time.”
“Three candles. Forward in twyme, silly.”
“Yes, but the body...”
“Pure dim structure. This is what Glerph was trying to tell us.”
“Then why did he pour drinks and talk of other matters?”
“To use the fadrigoish of the void, as in Kuvia.”
“I thought that was Rovia.”
“No, that would just be confusion.”
“From there we could go to peshoria in the north or Epiland in the south.”
“If we were on Dalurth, but this is Duskavin.”
“Perhaps we need another temple dream. They tend to sort things out. Glerph really makes sense when we meet in the dream temple.”
“I don’t think he’s part of our Darsan.”
“No, but he’s part of something that relates to Sequah, the Darsan keeper.”
“I think he just gives that impression to keep things simple. Something funny is going on, and he could become evil to our darsan, or working to prevent consummation.”
“Oh, I doubt it, he’s just a bit mysterious and you guess into the negative as usual.”
“Pity we are no longer on a boat.”
“What?”
CHAPTER TWO
The Esdurian crystal had drained the last few photons of power from the mandibular generator before a warning diode flashed on the console. He swapped Aristotle with Zilberman and moved Isis sideways to share a cabinet with Thoth and Pan. There was a red candle for the God and a white candle for the Goddess. He gazed at the diode and punched out a new sequence. They could re-charge the Esdurian crystal on Pangolin and swung into the morning cresent of the desert planet.
No longer on a boat
What?
The sequence of images, the vivid experiences of life. Remember? Remember that? Mind drift. You see it now, see the flicker of the candles in the temple. I would not have remembered. I would not have written anything down. A sudden glare of reflection from the surface of Pangolin. Not water, surely. Where are the characters? Where is Drishnu? Where is Matilda?
And passages, the passages of ripe prose themselves began to warm the food in the frying pan.
All times at one time dot com. Clause delta, to write before drinking. The time is 10:38, and the author may struggle at this point in time, as if half wanting to emerge into a full journal mode of presentation and get semi stifled by the fictional paradigm pulsating from the crystal in the spaceship to the dreams of the characters. Drishnu dreamed that he was a writer, in fact, a skill that he actually had little to do with, leaving such tasks for the scribes. Why his desktop…
Pause by the desktop of Drishnu. That’s on my PC. I havn’t been on cow today. Rashalika is on Jalantra with a message that becomes a scripture of the Demonlord religion. Will dim strtucture theory be incorporated into demonlord theology? No-body cares. The food is hot, the warming experiment a success. Clause delta, I’m still the writing of myself and the impingement of authorship would not even. Uneven. Even. Uneven. What’s the difference between sameness and difference?
So in chapter two the fiction fades and I write as if in a Journal. Identity issues, for only here am I notably Harold within the body of the text. In other writing such as fiction that is less obvious. But I don’t prefer it, finding the fiction to be often more interesting than the rammelled auspices of everyday life. In Journals the I is always present, and I am self-conscious as I repeat this I as if I really mean it time and time again. Thus I really mean it in a most intense way and I’m not sure that I mean it at all. From insecurity to egomania.
And in the tail book I’d pause and think of red wine and read about demonlords in the belly book. It was all very something or other, and I did not know what. I could recognise my writing there, yet did not feel competent to continue it, for one there’s no inspiration. I like the muse to guide me. I miss the muse when she’s not around. Sounds like lyrics of a new song.
At one thirty two I have returned home, thinking that If I write anything now it should go in the purple journal. This is actually the tail of a Darsan.
I like the muse the guide me
I miss the muse when she’s not around
I want the muse to inspire me
Where subtle meanings passions abound
Don’t go too slow
What lives what grows
Drag my undertow
Back to the living glow
I like the muse to find me
I feel empty when she’s not here
And in the greater darkness
Speak to me of other fears
Don’t burn too fast
Fantastic visions that can never last
Don’t neglect me
I need the inspiration I can’t see
I like the muse to guide me
I miss the muse when she’s not around
I want the muse to inspire me
Subtle meaning as passions abound.
CHAPTER THREE
In November the Darsan slides into pure journal at this point unless….but wait. I wrote of the Demonlords in the tail book and told you they no longer inhabit my high altar. I worship Sequa and Tara as the Wicca God and Goddess, plus the potentially divine yet human Harold and Karen. Tomorrow I see the new Karen. Today friends in the bar bought me drinks and I feel this way while broke, having change for only two drinks. Shall I mention names? Who believes in me or my potential forms of success?
Success ? The demon breathes. His huge, complex red face. You see it in a dream. Down in the heat of the engine room. You’d have to draw a diagram. I mean that information. What? Why? This can all be edited out later iff, and only iff. Thus was said this that what to if it back again. When I sing. When I dance. And the possession of psychotic Demonlords.
I mean to call mania and psychosis simply ill and just problems to be removed gives us very little actual information concerning the details of what is going on. Psychiatry draws a blank. It has no real idea how or why any delusion could be consistent and functional at the time. It has no insight into these mental state since it is based on objective observations rather than subjective experience or honest communication between these realms.
Some psychiatrists conclude that I have no insight into my illness because I do not agree with psychiatry. I have come to think that they have no insight into the fascinating mental states they lable as ill. The very term “mental Illness” is bias and misleading. There is far more to these differences than simple negatives. I now make a living from disability. My abilities are ignored in this equasion, while it seems obvious that I have more abilities that average. I’m not just disabled, I’m also extra-abled. The doctor can’t write, dance, sing, draw and so on, he can only provide medication to dull my inspiration and energy, thus artificially giving me the behaviour of a more dull and ordinary person, which I am not. Psychiatry made me stay depressed for years without my normal mania break of happiness. They keep me sad since mania freaks them out, while it is less risky than mountain climbing, which is socially accepted and applauded. Let me climb my own mountains and take the risk. Depression is just as ill and dangerous, and you cannot cure or change that with your chemicals in my case. And why should a specialist in these chemicals with the simplistic outsider’s notion of illness be considered the experts? There are no experts in mental health in the place that treats me, according to my notions of what such an expert would be skilled in, and many of the workers seem quite unsuitable for their role. Obviously I have high and opinionated standards. I also apply these to myself and suffer depression when I do this and fail to meet them. Such has been life so far.
CHAPTER FOUR
Dream 1
Milton was dreaming the very next night and could not find his dreaming partner, Matilda, at all. He seemed to be attending a funeral. He gazed down at the somehow familiar body in the casket. Some black fabric had been draped around the corpse but the chest with its gaping wound was exposed. Milton’s mind seemed foggy, but he knew that he was dreaming. He seemed to just look at the body in the casket for some time without having any clear thoughts or reactions. Abruptly two things happened at once and the dream quality seemed to change gears. A voice spoke in his ear;
“Was he close to you?”
Startled, Milton turned to face the person and at exactly the same moment realized that the corpse was his own, flooding his mind with urgent thoughts and emotions. For a split second Milton thought that the the person who spoke was a negro, yet he realised that the mottled skin he saw by flickering candle light was not black. Sometimes it looked blue, sometimes red or purple.
Just as Milton made eye contact with the person and struggled to frame a response to the question the being he first presumed to be a man began to sing an ancient Earthling song;
“Look into my eyes, and you will see
what you mean to me.”
The voice happened to be the most melodious and beautifully modulated sound Milton had ever heard, and at the same time he did look into the eyes. The iris colour blushed like a scared squid through a rainbow spectrum of vibrant blues and greens to a deep crimson colour. He seemed to realise that the being was an alien. It’s very presence was overwhealming and his mind reacted in stange ways that did not seem his own, as if by looking in the eyes and hearing the voice he was forced to split his identity from it’s familiar singular self into a cluster of other selves which buzzed around the whole dream situation in an effort to cope with it.
“I am your Demonlord. I am Rashalika. This is why I hypnotise you by default, and why you feel so sleepy.” Again the voice was perfect and utterly mesmerising in ears that did not seem to be his own. He suddenly felt exhausted by the intensity of the dream and collapsed inward to a deeper level of sleep. He reached out, turning as if to lie down and caught one maddening glimpse of Milton’s dead body. It seemed like a vast statue made of stone.
Then he slipped into unconsciousness.
Dream 2
Milton realised gradually that he was dreaming again in the second sleep. He was sitting opposite Rashalika, who spoke very rapidly in a weird, highly emotive alien language. Milton’s mind felt blank and numb. The language was incomprehensible but the speaking of it was a performance of exquisite art; Rashalika’s body moved and his hands made the most beatiful gestures while his eyes changed colour in patterns and rhythms. In fact the whole performance was like complicated music; voice, body and eyes all had their own conversation and rhythm, yet there was an overall cohersion to the total music which seemed to be a fourth and synthesising conversation in itself. Milton had no idea how this could even be possible. He became aware of a few thoughts welling up in his own mind. He thought he wanted to tell Rashalika that he was only a human and totally incapable of understanding this most profound and intense multi-levelled message, yet he could not move or interrupt since it was all so astonishningly entertaining. The tone of Rashalika’s voice alone touched him in a way he could never explain, it was perfect, and he could not dream of interupting with his own voice, so harsh and crude by comparison. Similarly he found it impossible to even blink and just had to watch Rashalika’s eyes and complex body language. No human dancer could move like that, and it seemed to go beyond what Milton assumed physical movement was or could be. Everything about Rashalika was simply extrordinary. He lost all track of time.
Rashalika stopped. The stillness and silence then washed through milton like a tidal wave. He gasped. He felt his heart beat. His attention was like a deep meditation, but he found himself counting the heartbeat while he gazed at the frozen statue of Rashalika.
Then the High Demonlord shrugged and said in a casual tone, “Of course to give you the English translation I must now provide you with a catalysing fulctrum comprising components in seven different dreams. It will all be confusing. I seem to communicate in pure alien with no idea of your capacity and thus no skill in communication, but in fact I am a master and I am investing much information in the deeper levels of your being that you can unravel slowly over several lifetimes at which point you will understand perfectly and you will be the Demonlord. I call this the first dream and you think it’s the second one, indicating our current difference, yet the sequence of the dreams will soon be scrambled to you after the dream loop explodes since you will insist on trying to see it from your old single self perspective, and of course that way it makes no real sense at all. Well, not what I call sense. Try to focus your spirit as my eyes make you very sleepy.”
Dream 3
Milton was dreaming. He was walking or indeed prowling a beach at sunset. The sun was a vast ball of orange, obviously not Sol. The air smelt of brine and something unidentifiable. Intricate mottled clouds in pink and red decorated the deep lavendar sky.
He could see a boat at the shoreline and recognised the rowing robot called Glerph and perched on the prow the silver crow, Guru, outlined in reflected orange light.
He approached a figure who was sitting cross legged on the sand facing into the sunset. Milton crept up on him from behind. The figure did not move.
Milton slipped a knife from the sheath hanging around his neck. He grabbed the person’s hair and attemped to rapidly slit the throat, but the person moved even faster.
Milton was holding a fuzzy cap that he had assumed was hair, and had no grip on his victim. The person abruptly stood and swivelled at once. The knife twisted in his hand. He looked into the pulsating yellow eyes, then slowly down to see the kinfe handle protruding from his chest as his own hand fell away and he felt the cold blade in his warm heart with genuine surprise. An odd thought flashed through his mind, since he knew that only his own fingerprints were on the handle of the knife.
“I am your Demonlord and you are now my Deshtoh,” whispered Rashalika, “Welcome to the party.”
Milton then felt himself die –an experience beyond all experience. He was watching as Rashalika cut a strip of flesh from the left arm of the corpse he now saw in the casket. He felt very strange as he saw Rashalika slowly chewing the meat. Rashalika’s eyes turned from yellow to red and purple. There was something very deliberate about the way he ate, and he inhaled through his nostrils as if sucking up what remained of Milton.
“Of couse what I’m really doing now is consuming your soul, that’s why you feel odd.”
It was true. He felt drawn into Rashalika’s mouth and nose, felt himself coming apart, spinning, changing around, fragmenting into lesser and lesser sub-units that only in total seemed to make up the identity he knew as Milton. Curiously there was no negative emotion since the emotions themselves were deconstructed into lesser energies. Pain and saddness became clusters of other somethings that swirled and dissolved in chaotic patterns. So did everything else that used to be Milton. He was no more.
Dream 4
Drishnu awoke in the dream and realised that this was a real dream. He had vague memories of being Milton as he gazed at the vast statue. It was a statue of a seated being. It was fairly close to human shape, yet Drishnu could not decide whether it was a statue of himself or of his Demonlord, Rahshalika.. He could remember being the Deshtoh of Myron, and thought that when Myron became the Deshtoh of Rashalika he would automatically be a kind of sub-Deshtoh within Rashalika. This was not a lasting situation, however, and he knew now that Rashalika called his sub-Deshtoh a laeshtoh, after which he could become a direct Deshtoh if Rashalika so decided. He felt the great honour, knowing now that Rashalika had many other laeshtoh to select from He drifted closer to the statue, feeling some kind of magnetism.
Drishnu wafted curiously to the navel of the statue, which opened like a portal to let him in. As he travelled into the body of the statue he felt that the pull was personal. He knew Rashalika was here, and that unique and powerful presence was nearby, leading or giving clues. He lingered at the chakra points of the statue while ancient emotions resolved. He moved From the Hara chakra below the navel down to the muludhara, the vehicle, the connection to the prosaic world and could feel flesh again. Then he began to ascend the meridian, lingering at each chakra in turn.
In the heart chakra he throbbed and burned with love, passion and hot emotion before the petals of the delicate inner flower opened. That deeper love was so pure, so intense. He floated blissfully in an ocean of love and had no intention of moving higher until he was drawn up to the throat when he heard Rashalika singing. The quality of that golden tone intranced him, the words told him so much and eventually communicated how to rise once more.
He came to the brow chakra, the third eye, and found Rashalika was there. The odd thing was that in the dream his recognition was total and exact, yet he saw no body of the demonlord, he only felt the spirit. That spirit was the third eye of the statue.
“I’ve been waiting for you, Drishnu. Now you take over the Demon Seat and drive this detrag for me. I’ve had enough of physicality for now.”
“How shall I do that, Demonlord?”
“Hit me with an evil intent and push me out of the seat. While I am capable of resistance I will go, but only if threatened. That’s a rule for this kind of detrag.”
“I thought the detrag was a statue.”
“Mote perspective. You are a much smaller and faster spirit. That’s how you possess another being. We are inside the mind of the being and call it our Demon Travel Agent, thus Detrag for short. Now come on, attack me, I’m keen to go elsewhere, but what we will do for a while is create a double demon seat. First you be the co-pilot. Then we swap as you force me from the seat. We do it in stages. Them I’m just your co-pilot, and we drive this body together for a while. Then I go for a coffee break and escape, leaving you in this body.”
“Which body is it, Demonlord?”
“We used to call it Rashalika. You become Rashalika, right?”
“Yes, Demonlord. It is written that I become my demonlord but…”
“There are no buts, Drishnu. As my Deshtoh you must do this and become me at one point. Turn from deshtoh to Theshtoh. I’ve been your theshtoh for longer than you can imagine.”
“What will you be?”
“I’m going to be the spirit of a purple plant beyond the void of power, as it happens. I’m going to my personal God, or my Theshtoh, Sequa. Then I can meet my Goddess, my Maeshtoh. Perhaps Tara. The identity cannot be clear from this perspective.”
“So do I start to co-pilot now?”
“It will seem that way from a singular perspective later on, but this is a dream to you now, Drishnu, no matter how powerful. We will proceed in another life. This dream simply provides information, now sleep again to see beyond what it seems
seven dreams;
dreams within dreams within dreams,
to the power of seven,
by the gates beyond Hell and Heaven.
By the power of three,
so let it be.
I thank you as you thank me”
Dream 5
He found a smooth stone on the beach. It seemed special to him so he picked it up and at that point realised that he was dreaming. He experienced a stong sensation of Déjà vu.. Surely he had picked up this polished pebble before.
“Call it a Hoy,” said Rashalika. He wanted to turn and look at the Demonlord who spoke at his side but for some reason he could not turn and only heard Rashalika’s voice.
“A Hoy? Very well, the stone is a Hoy.”
“Mmm, dark and beautifully polished. Did you know that I keep my spirit within the Hoy? That’s what made it so special for you. Now you cannot see me since I am very small compared to this Hoy. My home for the present time is inside.”
“Inside, Demonlord?”
“Yes, inside. Now throw the Hoy into the water.”
He threw the polished stone and it dissapeared with a plunk. The sound began to take him somewhere. His ears seemed to buzz or hear the rushing of the wind. The beach changed, pebbles mushrooming into huge boulders. His body felt different and he began to fly around the boulders, following a kind of comet that seethed with molton light. Gradually he came to realise that the comet was Rashalika and that he was a similar comet. They flew off into a strange dense medium which seethed and pulsated with muti coloured light.
The dream was very pleasant and they flew for what seemed a long time before approaching what seemed to be a planet or moon. As he had this thought Rashalika spoke directly into his mind,
“It can be many things, but that’s the Hoy I have been living in.”
“Then we are tiny.”
“That’s one way to understand it. I am several things really, but consider me now to be naturally this way. To interact I use an expanded projection and seem humanoid. A simple trick once you know how. We are flying through the water as tiny motes, and we are going into the hoy which is just down there looking like a great dark dome."
They buzzed over the surface of the stone. He saw the crystaline lattice which sparkled with blobs of coloured light, but unlike the pastel hues of the water these were sharp reds and greens. Then Rashalika contracted to a drop of seething gold. The drop expanded by stretching like a drumskin. He had time to realise that Rashalika had turned into a portal before he flew into it and into the hoy.
He saw the wrinkled ocean far below and his body felt different. He saw a large bird gliding ahead of him. He felt the rushing of the wind and his stretched wings. They had become birds.
“I am an Eagle and you are a Merlin, a small falcon. Follow me down. At this scale the hoy is about a kwelp or two kilometres long.”
“I see an Island.”
“Yes. This corresponds to a magical island on the planet Bassal, which is mostly ocean. I live on the island as you might say, although of course I do other things simultaniously.”
The Eagle began to spiral downwards and the Merlin followed. He felt sleepy as the mountain came into veiw. Or was it a volcano? Dream within dreams he thought as the dream faded.
Dream 6
They walked slowly up the winding mountain path. His breathing was laboured, yet Rashalika never seemed to tire or run out of breath. Eventually they reached the mouth of a small cave. Rashalika paused at the entrance.
“This is a place I’ve considered home for three millenia now. See that tree with red berries? I’ve grown many generations of the tree and like to eat a berry every day just to keep in touch with those who eat, an animal kind of thing. I have been selecting the berries for each generation of tree. This is the female on the right. Now you eat a berry, spit it out there on the left side of the cave where your first male tree will grow. It will have the same berries but look like a different species of tree to you. Meditate on these trees, it’s also all very symbolic.”
He obeyed these instructions and when he had finished the rain began to fall.
Rashalika ushered him inside. It was dim in the cave and his eyes took a while to adjust. He saw a low table with two straw mats.
“I wove the second mat yesterday since I knew my Deshtoh would visit today. Normally I live alone with the one mat. I even sleep sometimes.”
“Rashalika, you are so fit and good at walking….”
“Well, yes, as High Demonlord I do everything excellently as an aspect of basic functioning, now take a seat.”
He sat down thankfully on the mat, breathing hard, feeling the ache and pulse of his legs. After his eyes grew acustomed to the dimness of the cave he noticed a few items on the table. There was a small round ceramic bong, raku fired by the look of it. The conepeice was packed with green. There was a gold ring and a stone, or in fact the same hoy he had thrown into the sea, the pebble that they were apparently inside.
“You smoke, Rashalika.”
“Yes,” said Rashalika as he sat on the opposite mat, “Once a year. Most of the time I simply meditate on the prepared bong as it is without smoking, this being a meaning of Demonlord. The drug used to be a demon for me but now it too is a Demonlord. You will share the bong with me today, since today happens to be my Deathday, that special day of the year. I have to help these events become more dreamish to you, since you must have noticed how vivid and real all these dreams are to you.”
“Yes, even my powerful lucid dreams are not this focussed.”
“You are borrowing my focussing energy. Focus and energy can become very similar once you can handle time properly. Then they become identical and we really start cooking with gas.”
“I will try to remember your words, Rashalika, but they are obscure.”
“Yes, that can’t be helped, but at least I stick to the singular perspective as if you had one identity. My more true meaning is multiple and you won’t understand it until your third life from this one. Forget about it now, I am saving your functional confusion for the near future.”
“Thank you, Rashalika. Do we smoke now?”
“In a monit. A monit is a time measure here on Bassal, falling between the precision of a minute and the flexibility of a moment. First notice the hoy and the ring. We will now use a Fadrigoish to swap the terms, thus calling that one the ring and that one the hoy, since indeed in old Earthling culture to give someone a hoy was to give them a ring on the telephone. You can now use this ring to contact your Demonlord who dwells within. Handy, rather like a Genie in a bottle or lamp.”
An old fashioned lamp appeared on the table. Rashalika touched the wick and a bluish flame appeared.
“Oh, traditional magic, Rashalika! I’ve never seen you do that before.”
“Everything I do is traditional magic to me. Now smoke one toke.”
He took the bong and the lamp, rather awkwardly he thought, and inhaled the pungent smoke. He thought it would make him cough, but in the dream the smoke had no harsh quality and was like breathing fragrant air. He felt his heart beating faster a monit after he blew the smoke from his nostrils. A wave of giddy pleasure hit him as he passed the lamp and bong to Rashalika.
“Now we call the bong the lamp and vice versa,” explained the Demonlord as he took the equipment and with mesmeric flowing motions lit the half-burned buds, inhaled, and replaced the items on the table to form a square with the hoy and ring. Rashalika sat in silence for three monits, and only then blew out the smoke to recommence breathing.
“Actually I can manipulate my emotions directly if I want to, thus the drug is actually obsolete for me, but you need it. Now throw the lamp over there. “
“But it’s a beautiful one, Rashalika. You must have made it yourself.”
“Exactly, so you break it now as part of the ritual. You will come to understand, since we only need this burning bong. Three items to triangulate the magic. To be square we count Agni, the flame, as the fourth individual in the party. For purposes of Fadrigoish we call Agni Drishnu, now what is your name?”
“Um…I don’t seem to remember.”
“Let’s call you Agni, in that case. You be the God of fire for a while. If I say Major Domo in relation to Agni Deshtoh then you say arigato and ring the lamp now.”
“Pardon?”
“Throw the lamp. No, not the bong, remember our Fadrigoish and try hard to resist the mandatory confusion.”
Agni threw the ceramic “lamp” towards the black depths of the cave and it smashed with a rather dull sound.
“I’ll never forgive you for breaking that special lamp. You will have to make me a new one in the fullness of time when I am not here and you are Rashalika, since we can swap names soon, yet before I generate the confusion we have to create a machine to help with the dream unravelling process. It starts as a conceptual machine that we now imagine. Visualise it hovering above the table and recall a book you once read of the alien master in the cave. We will reflect a similar situation here. Now the machine is highly advanced so it looks like a large facetted gemstone and rather like the hoy looked when we were motes like comets. It beams lasers of magic electricity to the hoy and ring on the table, then all the lights in the machine sparkle and pulsate as it thinks of something very intelligent that you can’t yet imagine.
“Oh, your visualisation has improved but your machine is still fuzzy to me. I’ll give you some focus-energy and it will be clear, gradually becoming more real to you over the millenia as you meditate in this cave and wish I’d come back and make things easy. Too bad, I won’t return until really needed. You have to make the machine real by yourself and it’s not natural for you to imagine anything clearly as we know. You have struggled with visualisation for years already, yet eventually you will see the machine working and everything I said in alien languages will make sense and be replayed by the machine as a hologram for your entertainment.
“Alright, you can now imagine the machine well enough, let’s get you really confused. I’ll give you my Deathday present in the form of pure attention which you pay back to the hoy, now listen carefully as if this too might make sense one day when it probably never will. First let me just mention your reincarnations and the naming part of confusion. You call me Agni until I go away. Then you be Milton again for the rest of your life. Then you have a hard meaningless life and hate life, ending it by suicide. Then you have a happy contented life but learn little. Then you get Reborn as Drishnu and the memories return once you reach the Ursa Tiger Lands of Dreaming. The soul of every being killed by Drishnu, and the list is long, goes to the Lands of Dreaming. You will sort of own all those souls. However, the Drishnu of Agni can ring the bong back to lamphood if only the spectre of silent dreaming submits to the clause of the applied hoy. Focus and tell me what I mean by that."
“Ra…Agni, I don’t…I mean now I am confused, and…”
“Perfect, then what is your name?”
“I’m not quite…”
“TELL ME YOUR NAME OR DIE NOW!”
“Rashalika!.”
Dream 7
Milton woke on the beach. He looked around for the stone which he knew should be close. He could not find it but discovered that he wore a gold ring on his right pinky. That was the finger he had learned to call Rashalika, right hand, the dexter in Latin, for the more ethical deities; Rashalika, Tara, Jin Ri, then Sequa. His left hand was the shadow mirror, sinister in Latin, with the sequence of Myron, Quesha, Drishnu and Dreulor. His thumbs changed names and were once Harold and Karen. He felt odd to think that Drishnu was his left middle finger and resisted an urge to change the ring. It fit his pinky in the standard way but fitted his Drishnu finger only between the first two joints. The second meaning of joint ocurred to him. He had the odd and sudden thought that a demon was ruled by other demons, not just the demonlord.
He stood and walked from the sea back inland. He came to a small temple or shrine. He walked through the open doorway. The interior was lit by candles. There was a kind of long box. It was a coffin and he was attending a funeral. He gazed down at the corpse and realised that he was trapped in a loop of dreaming that could go around forever, just like some forms of psychosis. His seventh dream woke into the first dream and the notion terrified him. Then a voice spoke in his ear.
Chapter four
Rashalika woke in the garden. There was a warm orange sun in the sky. Only vague memories connected him to the events before he fell asleep. Near his hand was a book. He looked around the garden and picked up the book. The book felt real and solid in his hand. The garden glowed with a living, irridenscent energy.
For a while Rashalika did nothing. His attention seemed divided between the book and the garden. He gazed at the multitude of colourful plants. He felt the weight of the book. He felt the tug from two directions, the urge to read the book and the urge to focus on the beautiful garden. The garden came to him through his eyes, and the vision was somehow dazzeling yet tranquil. He could also hear the sounds of birds and insects, and the garden had the fragrances of flowers and herbs.
The book was dark and heavy. He could feel its solid weight that spoke of reality and profundity. He glanced at the cover of the book and remembered the Darsan. It was how he came to be here.
He remembered Drishnu, Milton and D’lorah. He knew their stories might continue in the book, but if he chose the book then he could loose the garden.
Rashalika opened the book at random. The wind blew and a purple leaf landed in the book. He turned to see the plant with purple leaves, but it was a plant in which the flower petals were just like coloured leaves. He though about turning a leaf in the book, that double meaning because one sense of leaf was the side of a page. He gazed at the plant with purple leaf flowers.
“Sequa” he breathed.
“Why does a Demonlord visit my garden?” the voice seemed to come from the plant.
“I have come to worship.”
“Why would a Demonlord worship Sequa? Sequa is beyond the void of power.” The words took shape in the air. A cucoon of golden light eminated from the purple flowers and turned into a man. He had no hair and looked quite old. His eyes were particularly bright.
“I am Rashalika, and I arranged the Darsan to reach you. I was led by my feelings and I am unsure why I ever worshiped you, Sequa.”
“Honest enough, but are you relinquishing your book? You have a choise.” Sequa gazed at Rashalika with half-lidded eyes. Rashalika felt some tension dissolve since the full gaze of Sequa’s eyes was intense.
“So I must loose the book to meet my Threshtoh?”
“Yes, and loose identity as a Demonlord.”
“That is hard.”
“Yes, and you are a dedicated being. You can endure hardship. Now become someone else for your Threshtoh. Sequa has no other dealings with a Demonlord.”
Rashalika looked at Sequa for a while. Then he placed the book down on the grass.
THE END