text: It was upon the shattered road from Murzil to Keta where the sage Parabrahma met Atenati. She was engulfed by the shadow of a sandstone pillar, lean, eaten away by the heat, and surrounded by a halo shaped by the glare of three suns. In defiance of the holy tenets of the battle phalanx, her shield was strapped to her right arm. Ruins of ancient gashes basked indolently upon her forehead. Her ears were bars of red, mangled flesh. Her nose was a haphazard reconstruction. The skin beneath her eyes was tormented. Yet it was her feet that stood out so visibly, untouched by scars, smooth and adolescent. Parabrahma did not notice her in the swirling desert heat. He was distracted, contemplating the rituals of the mirror cults of Murzil, and how they conflicted with the interpretations of the cultist pilgrims with whom he was travelling. Each pilgrim wore a face. A face far more intimate than flesh, rooted deeper than intellect, as stubborn as a misplaced emotion. The woman with long silken ribbons falling from earlobes to her footprints wore the face Yuchagri; an expression of witnessing an ageless injustice under the aegis of an unbreakable principle. The man with an abyss in his left arm wore the face Isseta; an expression of delirium moved by the presence of lovers from lives lived, unlived, and yet to live. The limping elder whose face was shrouded by the charred silver of sundried hair wore the face Shranate; an expression of colorless fear sung with tears as melodious as a lament of infant chords. They had witnessed these faces in the Great Mirror, but for Parabrahma. When he looked upon himself, he only saw his own reflection. Staid, immovable, rippled as if by an absolute lack of wind on water. Atenati watched sand spiral up from their march and raised her warspear. A sun spat brightness into the eyes of the foremost pilgrim. The pilgrim, a maiden, was shaken from her reverie and her face failed. She looked at Atenati and was afraid. The maiden spoke: *Our blood is metal, our skin is death, our flesh belongs to the infinite, and our soul is a thief. To slay us will bring no honor to the shamed, no wisdom to the maddened, no fulfillment to the primal, and no alacrity to the ensorcelled. We are pilgrims of the Mirror. We seek distinction from paradoxes, and so may you. Let us pass and determine what the heavens see reflected upon the world.* Atenati flashed. She raised her shield. At its center were the remains of the symbol of an eye jaundiced by the metal, with three pupils that danced in the light Parabrahma did not even realize when the fresh, sonorous lines of blood had spilled over it, for Atenati had moved beyond the seduction of comprehension. Her spear tasted veins before the skin sheathing them knew it was cut. She became a silhouette, a blur, bronze, and the pilgrims falling dead attested to her accuracy. Her aim was as absolute as the lust of true lovers in the moonlight. Parabrahma did not understand how she missed his neck by the distance of a moth’s wing. Terror had abdicated reason and his eyes were watered by a harvest of fear. He swerved and felt the drums of his heart desynchronize each time he saw a face falter, a body collapse, a rain of life. When the massacre ended, Atenati was behind him, spear pointed away, each drop of blood taking an eon to fall from it’s killing point. The famished earth drank each splash. Atenati turned in phases reminiscent of the moon. She spoke, and Parabrahma, silencing his soul, sat. ***** Like all free tribespeople of the Ketaoi, in my younger days I travelled. I joined the assassin tribes on their cattle raids. I was a mercenary with the Southern Cults and protected copies of their sacred texts, which they guard in mountain-holds like exiled child kings. I witnessed the three blessed rebirths of Mihgateranna, and the three damnations that ruined him. I did this because I adhered. The Ketaoi have custom that helps them shape their lives. When a woman is found to be with child, the shaman of her tribe gathers the elders and together, they breathe the waft of the crowflower. It is said that when the waft truly reaches a zenith, they can see the lifepath of the fetus in its entirety. After sensation returns, they write what they remember on eggshells and call it a prophecy. They always remember how and when the child is to die. And they enforce these prophecies, because prophecies are truth, and truth is divine. Therefore, to adhere to the prophecies is to adhere to the divine. There are Ketaoi colossi capable of slaying lions who are set to gather berries until the day they are expected to walk into swamps and contract plagues. Fragile cowards incapable of defying children are armored with precious steel and made to stand on the battlements and survive the loosening of bowels and an amputation of limbs. The Ketaoi adhere, for to do otherwise is to make liars of the shaman and their elders. Inadherence ruins clans. It rots teeth. It contracts diseases and enfeebles the cattle. The eggshells which bore my name said that I would die in a battle beneath the viridian moon, and so I sought to conquer battle dread to prepare for that day. In one of my journeys, I found myself in the Helsesshoi Phalanx on the newly inaugurated battlefield of Ikhuyeri. *Elelelele!*, went the battle-chant of the frontline. The enemy responded with their own chant. The ground between the two armies trembled under a cadence of heavy footsteps. In the rear thummed the great drums. Scattered gangs of lowbred slingers took aim and their lead bullets shrieked echoes above us. They struck shields like a multitude of gongs. The tremors gave depth and contrast to the all-encompassing noise. The armies closed in, nearer and nearer. And they met. But no weapons were raised, no skin torn, and death remained unfed. Shields pushed, shields resisted. The omens, you see. They weren’t right yet. We looked to the sky for the right signs. The heralds walked among us promising that once a dove tore apart a preybird and the solitary sun shied away behind the purda of an ashen cloud, we could begin the bloodletting. It would be a blessed bloodletting. The preybird was dead, but the sun yet shone. The armies grumbled. *Where are the idiot priests?* *Have them slaughter a goat to appease the gods!* *Have them slaughter goat-faced Achenji!* *You look more a goat than me, whore-son!* *Fuck the gods!* We grew impatient. We were, after all, on the precipice of glorious death. And we grew tired. Our chants began to falter. They became rasps, losing their fluidity and synchronization to ennui, and to monotony. The weakest among us began to whisper, mumble, and even hum. Such shameful impiety! Frontlines are never to be silent. The battle-chant must always be maintained. The legendary strategos Nin-Kuriltau had chanted throughout his rout at the gates of Siyoi. At the end, he was alone, bleeding, dying, and even with his death rattles, he chanted, chanted the holy chant. A true warrior. An exemplar! A silent frontline is more than dishonor. It is sacrilege. But even that seemed more preferable than this maddening pause. So we agreed that half of an omen is as worthy as an omen entire. Any remaining theological misgivings were soon sorted with military efficacy and the first enemy abdomen was soon torn apart in a berserk frenzy. The battle began. The chant was renewed. All was in perfect harmony. I remember only little. There was a beating heart that embraced my spear, which then bathed in the bile of an open abdomen. It hit a clavicle at an odd angle and an edge dulled. The iron became flesh. Vision clouded. Strength faltered. Words drooled. Battle dread blurred discipline, bred disorder. The rigidity of the frontline broke. Advances met retreats, retreats met challenges, challenges met bloodthirst, bloodthirst met advances. The solitary sun witnessed this, and was soon joined by its siblings. They grew tired of the massacre and retired early, inviting dusk to loom upon the world. The last of the frontliners were now dead or close to it. Their lips were foamed red, and spawned beads of blood and spit that released the names of wives and mothers in their disintegration. The earth was a miscegenation of shit, piss, and blood. The last of the suns crumbled into the universe. A fog descended upon the corpses. Nothing disturbed the wind traversing the pervading stench. I waited for the omens to signal the end of the battle. And then the viridian moon finally rose and I heard the souls of the dead sob as they transcended. They did not challenge me, and I witnessed their lament, and I broke. I fell into the viscera at my feet and a great madness overtook me. Night swayed through the fog. I heard footsteps as rumors of sunlight threatened the horizon. The shaman of my tribe walked on the dead and watched me with every one of its heads. *Maker of lies! Mocker of truth!*, it spat. And I realized this was truly the battle I was foretold to die in. *The fires went out in Keta last night*, it said, *and the lambs gave birth to bones.* *You are disenfranchised, Atenati Death-traitor! May the future you stole be grim and debased!* When the shaman vanished, I looted the bodies of the enemy strategoi. A pineal gland here, a metatarsal there, an occasional silver stud affixed to a broken spine elsewhere. When I returned to Helsessh, the acropolis honored my victory and the temples granted me any boon that I desired. I asked for the hand of Sijuwa the rope-dancer, who walked high above the city between the towers and the cliffs, tracing hieroglyphs in the air with torches. I imagined an act of balance between the earth and the sky to be close to battle dread. The boon was granted as the season of commerce began. We travelled with one of the Neutralist caravans. We sold stale gossip to provincial oafs. Sijuwa performed and I delighted. Up in the heavens, the stars were as mindless beasts in their haste to accelerate time. The season of commerce ended, and the boon expired, and Sijuwa prepared to depart with what remained of my joy. I asked Sijuwa to stop, to extend the boon, to be with me endlessly. *Only gods can claim to be endless, and the gods are jealous*, said Sijuwa. We wept as we parted and promised mutual death in our senility. I raged and took the road to Keta and my tribe. I had no great purpose, no shining banner for which I could do battle, so I made my own. I swore to fight the injustice of prenatal prophecies. Along my path I found a band of Surrealist zealots. I discovered disgust and caprice in their foolishness and imbalance. On whims, they dug wells and then filled them with the detritus of autumn. The built sturdy paths in untrammeled forests and then hid them with rumors of demons and thieves. They found whores to enlighten and then heresify. They stole from the rich and gave to the reasonably comfortable. They taught the poor to hate hunger and love starvation. They did not see my hatred, and they saw my realism as an act. They saw it as a stubborn loyalty to some form of anti-dogma, and they marveled. *What could be more surreal*, they questioned,* than a mask of realism?* They embraced what they deemed to be my mask. They became saints for the world, but to themselves remained contrarians. They smiled with glee and a smug, secret superiority. They grew terrified of being unmasked under the liberation of fermented drink, ignited herb, the company of warm flesh at night, and the soft luxury of silk and pillows. So they advocated celibacy and austerity as pillars of divinity. So it was that the zealots became demigods, which was when I slaughtered them. They laughed when I did so, and their eyes were wide mirrors that shone. ***** And saying so, Atenati sat on the ground in front of Parabrahma. The blood on the spear was dry and weevils sang beside the road. He spoke: *Is that why you killed these pilgrims? Because they wore masks reminiscent of the Surrealists?* Atenati stared at the dark clouds of the evening. *Do you notice the haze above the clouds?, she said, It was put there by our ancestors to protect us from the wages of an older heresy.* Parabrahma stared up with Atenati and did not see a haze. She did not look at him,* I am not yet senile, though I will be. You are the first to have looked into the Mirror and not be slaughtered after meeting me.* Parabrahma looked upon the symbol of the eye on her shield. The pupils did not dance under early starlight, as it turned out. *And will you tell me why the Mirror did not show me a mask?*, he asked. Her eyes pounced from the heavens to the earth, to the deadened, blunted face of Parabrahma. She whispered, her words almost fricatives, *Look into the sky and notice the haze.* And Parabrahma looked into the sky again, and there was still no haze. And he looked again, again, and the haze was veiled, veiled, until Atenati wailed. And the merest figment of a delusion stirred in the firmament, and it fell upon the eye on the shield, and the pupils danced again. *See, see!*, wailed Atenati, and Parabrahma did. It shimmered and cracked at its seams, and he saw great fires bloom beyond it. The rage of something ancient, with blood that flowed in veins weaved of hatred. And it was the antithesis of absence. And she whispered a question, and Parabrahma did not answer. He walked away, composing an uneven meter and an uneven rhythm and heard Atenati’s wails echo up towards the haze that he could now see.