Blow Your Trumpets Gabriel

[Imperius]

Red out. When the swirling sands get caught up in migrant storms they all end up coalescing around Dust Town. One might have preferred the frostbitten storms of Siberia and the minus fifty nights where not even embers clung to the dry wood in the pits. Fire was of no scarcity in the arid wastelands that surrounded the mecca of the damned. Perched upon the throne fabricated by means long forgotten, the glistening armor pierced the sand veil for miles out; some forsaken blaze that was a buoy to the wandering and depraved. For a moment, it surely could not have been longer than ten- lids closed over those eyes.

Blow your trumpets Gabriel. It is at last time to reap what I've sown. Go forth.

`` That is not my name. `` A tone that never changed arose from behind the mask while the hood of black was pulled overhead.

Having long since abandoned the weighted steel carapace, a simple black robe was worn quite close to the skin. The mask was asian in design and painted a black lustre. Down a hallway the black robed man began strolling, swinging the thurible to and fro. Mirrored visages would look in disdain and horror, were their eyelids not sewn shot and their mouths in any functioning order. Nailed to the stone wall were the remnants of the children's orphanage- impaled by the palms and the feet.

"O Virgin Theotokos"- a swing to reveal some of the incense on the way filled in the synapse of the memorable charming parody too well. Their ears had been left intact, fully functional and in the ever-silent duldrum that was the hall of reflection they had all been as alert as deer. Struggling with guttural grunts and cries all varying in timbre, they really did compliment the chant.

"Mary full of grace, the lord is with thee." A black leather hand slowly trailed down the leg beside him, tracing its muscles and trembling skin before arriving at the totem that held it penultimately in place.

"Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb." Each step that was taken down the eternity of a path drew him ever closer to the twin oaken doors. The sky above was a perpetual black drizzled with the dying stars of yester-year. To the left was a wall of pure glass that allowed a vision of endless sand. Be it day or not, the sun never rose, or never set? Eclipsed in eternal darkness the mind would eventually succumb to the voices in their head- as he had been no further immune.

"For thou has borne Christ the Saviour, the Deliverer of our souls." With the thurible swinging from its delicate woven chain the final step had been taken. Left fingers loosened their grip and began easing the incense dispenser to the mirrored tile below it. A single ceremonial candle was removed from its old iron caste that held it in the stone and was taken in grip as the strides reversed. Now heading to the direction from whence he had came, the candle was pressed to the straw beneath each orphan. The smell was distinct and therapeutic to his senses. Each furthering filled blackened lungs with a putrid pleasure. Until the strides brought him to the inception point; he reversed once more and savored in the image.

"Amen." Their blaze was a rarity around these parts. Lives offered to the greater above- giving light in the recesses of space; a void that never quite escaped the darker side of existence. Fervent steps brought him to the twin oaken doors which were hoisted with ease and with a step through the gateway he'd transport countless lightyears unto Rhy'Dinian space. A familiar realm, one that he'd finally lay waste to.

Or so that was intended. Upon arriving to what he believed would be the hordes of soldiers he'd been promised there was merely a mass grave. Intestines were thrown about like a child's pasta- blood ran in thick red meridians and painted each step with an ooze cast of his soles. The sky was a furnace that littered the air with phosphorus and ash; it was all wrong. Flames devoured thatch roofs and the screams and cries were no more. It was a barren wasteland- yet who had done it? A masterpiece no less than his own private Guernica lay before him. Who had spun such bold strokes of bloodied paint across this canvas? One look to the sky and the answer was clear.

There was no tongue to be heard within his mind anymore. Only a colossal figure arose into the whirlpool of clouds that blotted out the sun. Shingles began ripping from buildings and even iron supports began lurching from the ground. The roads which had been static for thousands of years began churning and rupturing at the force. Only when it turned to him and stared with those bright, desolate spheres of paralysis had it finally registered.


Red out. It had only been a few moments, surely. When the lids lifted once more and the storm was still brewing around Dust Town, he'd felt no less fatigued. Old tales of an old being that no longer was and an old town that no longer was. Now there was merely this shining figure atop his pedestal, watching over his kingdom of the damned. Even if to prevent utter annihilation, for whatever reason, he'd taken his spot as ordered. Blow your trumpets, Gabriel.