Serial Experiments Epilogue: Day of the Lords

The visions fall heavy as fog, taunting; upon a clouded mind. Misty spectres pulling gray stings. It is, as writ: "a terrible night to have a curse."

All crowns are cursed with a terrible weight. This is largely known and rarely experienced.

"I am NOT the same." Augustus had lost his face—all his features—to royal ambition. He could, now, only be perceived as a tower cloaked in scarlet cloth, an eyeless ghost curtained off from the lower world he walked.

"I am not the same. As my enemies, as the Healing Church, as Saturn or as my past. I am like nothing the world has ever seen."

Is that really so? Has Augustus, victim—doubtless—of past tragedy, succumbed his innocence to the de-personalized ideal ruler?

"I am still myself, and I wear this crown still. I do not dispatch Troopers, I do not crack down on blasphemies; I have given my lieutenants, all and each, power."

Seven heralds, colorful characters—not a scrap of olive drab between them—lined behind their king, the cloth column hunched before the mirror.

Augustus's eyes flickered, like livid candleflame cloaked behind his new form, forward and over-the-shoulder all at once. He looked to the depths of the mirror, to his subordinates, past himself, and saw the same unimpressive cliche. A family man stolen by temptation, a fire-wielder, holes-in-hands, no eyes, too many eyes... Just a lineup of nothing new.

He should be unable to stop screaming, but he holds them under cold control; his emotions and lieutenants alike. Augustus should be terrified of the emissaries from Hell who line his chambers. He is frozen—not with fear. He is mystified at the metallic vacuum in his viscera, the frozen cosmos where emotion would resound. In ascending to the throne, he has abandoned the mushy imperfections of humanity. Messy ideals, swapped for a steel creed. What I say, goes.

It is holy and it is golden and it shines; it is the sunrise on an inauspicious solstice or the dawn of a new era, all within the body.

Without, the city of Wintertree is gray and corpselike as its namesake. Antlerlike spires twitch in a windless breeze. And below the throne is foulest... below the throne of the golden boy-king, a great gray grotesque spews poisoned doubts as if from a bottomless well. Doubts, regrets, anxieties—the mass of fermenting mourning this city was built on. Runoff, all, from the dead, the living, and those of us who know better.

In a space beyond space, a lonely purple shadow cast a twin in artificial glow, a light cold as cosmic stone from a hotly whirring box. This mind is one of sheer sensation, I'm afraid; I'm afraid. I'm returning to an electric mess, I'm afraid. I'm afraid I'm returning to an electric mess. The king and the lonely shadow are linked by a shattering melody, the resonance that rips the wings off of butterflies, that knocks dust off the wings of psyche, great and gray, or black, or purple, raven-feathers wavering. The longer I stare into the iridescence off the kingly mind or the shadow;;;; th3 f4rth3r IIII i i i i i i fa l ;;;llll

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