《Darkside of Zion》


 Prologue: Screams of Martyred Saints

    The Afterlife is a place of bleakness. Where all acts of violence that end in death, anguished screams and crimes against humanity resonate in cycles for all eternity. Every act of cruelty and slaughter continues side by side with its victims spirit. Watching their death again and again in an endless violation of torment. Spectral fire lights a world of spiritual paralysis and strange vistas. Despite dark clouds and constant drizzle that burns the eyes with ash, it is an arid land of parasitic insects and bloated corpses. The Gnosis of cut feet and whipped faces sing praises to the madmen who peel the joy of life away with drudgery while fascist insects feed on the life of the people.


    A land of howling ghosts and mournful poets. Incantations lost to vile Tophets. Bogamils flayed bodies flap in the firmament, eaten by solar snails and squids from beyond our atmosphere. Satan creator of the universe has misled the mundane minds of the materialists, hiding in the guise of a radiant soul. Actually a parasite of untold hunger like billions of societal tape worms withering in the unknowable nature of Tetragrammaton. A blind maniac who was betrayed by his own zealot scribes among the temple assassins. His wisdom of the East lost to censors and sodomites. Forgetting the ��Mother of Time�� and the mysteries of their evil God��s crimes.


    Biting wind whips through splintered trees that house vultures, rain turns deserts into sickly swamps full of jackals and crocodiles. Water here is stagnant, plant life dead. The hills are littered with crosses holding the long desecrated corpses of whole villages. Hermits and holy-women chant from funeral cairns and mountain tops, untold wisdom falls to the deaf and unwritten songs.


    Every spirit that has ever lived and gazed at the stars in wonder lives in this place. Be it lizard or some future herald of this planet way off in times yet unconceived by our mortal minds. Mystic gnosis of the Albigensian crusade violated, just as the Midianites were vandalized by the homeless hordes of blood letters under the madman Moses who came down from the mountain with a lust for genocide. Cruelty and destruction have been the only doctrine since the bronze age collapse.


    Intelligences never named or peaked beyond the black cosmic ancient seas laugh at the folly of our dogmatic violence and foolish repression. Many versions of this world and others share an afterlife that is not all suffering but humans bring what they understand, to be mocked by creatures far beyond our knowledge and small primate wisdom. Cackling crimson alchemy performed on infants who don��t grasp the significance of the surgical initiation to the vampire god��s lust for children.


    There is a strange paradox of stories going back to epochs so distant they defy our ideas of time its self. Neolithic tribes farthest conscious thought are but a blink in the eye of the deep time represented here. Beings so ancient that lived in societies far more advanced than ours. Still mournfully ended up below the sediment. Experience and lore lost to cataclysms unremembered.


    Past cosmic events pale in comparison to the rise and fall of far out vistas when our solar system goes supernova and fades into a final darkness of space dust. Wizards and Sorceresses shades remember lost canticles. Singing the names of the creator dragon and etherial spirits in songs remembered only by the centipedes, jumping spiders and flying lizards. Wisemen dug up from ancient graves are scourged by pseudo spiritual profiteers, who speak long winded lies about their ownership of others homes and teachings.


    Bellow a blood red sky, in a landscape devoid of color, live souls lost in their own dreams. Suffering endlessly in their final moments of existence played over and over again in a cosmic echo. Like a mean spirited joke only a madman can grasp. Echoes of eternity clash with the charnel reality few can fathom, and all would lament their transgressions to escape limbo in this pit of despair. Crazed lunatics laugh at the insanity of it.


    Ghosts have no rest here. Wars and plagues of the past rage on. A regiment��s final charge during the last gasp of Napoleon, play out beside the defeats of the Punic wars. Protestant and Catholic purges play out beside ancient ethnic cleansing of the children of Canaan. A strange folly of so many more advanced cultures that once shared our planet. Cradles of multiple societies obliterated by fools and geologic processes while the universe was still young.


    The Spanish Inquisition thrive here. Papist crusaders seeking gold and political advantage. Genocidal henchmen with mummified corpse decay urge on settlers circling children with accelerants. They laugh at each others shared goals of silencing voices under guise of security and disappearing families they could not control.


    Oil Wars make homes into birth defect ravaged orphanages with depleted uranium. Marauding conquests have fields of burning bodies in endless roads of death and dismemberment. How many times have Toulouse burned or the name of Merovingian blotted from history? Celtic burial mounds glow from miles of stolen lives beside the sinking sinking battlefields of futuristic trepidation, leaving scapegrace art projects for rapscallions and scallywags whose only joy is butchery and picking their spiritual cavities with cleaved animals spines, drunk from the hostility of rotten minds.


    Cavemen with their lost visions and ancient philosophers far out transgressions scrawl litanies for translucent ghosts passing side by side in the spectral procession of the vibrant night sky. Healers do what they can to fix the horrors of fools and Pharisees. Vulgar remembrances to the creeping forgetfulness of deep time, a scale so vast it confuses even the brightest minds.


    Ancient Sanhedrin pogroms in the Book of Joshua. Early gnostics and fugitive Saints are witnessed by crying gods from time immemorial. War profiteers crimes in Vietnam and Gaza howl forever. Long memories of crimes along the silk road, invasions of Afghanistan and Yemen. The dirty wars and US slave trade executions echo here among drowning bodies of Witch Hunts and torture of the Mexica. Songs lost in the night tide.


    The Roman siege of Masada and mass suicide happens side by side with WW1 Ottoman purges of Armenian Christians. All acts of genocide are remembered here. Intentional mass starvation of India and Ireland make generations wail lamentations. As if the atrocities of colonized native peoples never ended while ghastly voices howl for salvation. Infants held by mothers frozen in pits are trampled by cavalry in snowfields covering mass graves.


    The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.


    In a valley of dry bones, deposed Prophets shamble down rows of crucified Saints. Beside dying martyrs with broken legs nailed to trees, schizophrenic faith healers and psychic mediums from the Leaper colonies do their best to ease the pain of these political criminals. Last rites here are accusations, hurried assaults in an endless graveyard. This is the afterlife, the night lands, the netherworld of twilight.


    There exist several armed camps specific to this place. The radical followers of King Sorsos the sorcerer once named Solomon the Wise, his zealot Sanhedrin. His wicked followers bring fire and desolation to their neighbors. Untold wisdom was wiped out by the Abrahamic death cults. How the earlier sages must laugh at the most ghoulish of mistranslated and perverse faiths.


    Guided by fabricated documents and an invented history. Cruelest are the fallen angels devoted to corruption, study of magic and financial crimes described in the Talmud. Where humanity has no protection from the Blood Letters. Sicari executioners have mass murdered children of the Phoenicians, the Philistines, the Amalekites, the Girgashites, the Hittites, the Hivites, the Jebusites, the Samaritans and the Perizzites.


    Sages and mystics hunted by menacing hounds, while assassins stalk homes of farmers for any man of military age with out cause or evidence. Hidden among caves and eagle nests in the hills are the cult of the Cathars. The persecuted Gnostics and Essenes who remember the ancient ways of the Goddess cult. Suffering in a civil war and purges endless centuries before time as we know it.


    Souls seeking some kind of solace and meaning to existence flutter in the wind, finding only obscure Gods without benefit of knowledge or wisdom. The torment of existence leaches any good intentions from even the heavenly chorus or wise hermits living among the ruins of lost ages.


    Few remember the days of ecstasy and merriment. Where nymphs and satyrs frolicked in pastoral meadows of plenty. Where song and wine was the promise of eternity after a life toiling bitter cold to tend to sick crops.


    The doom came with The Fisher King, an entity of no ill will or spite. Just an absentminded God who prefers impersonating the dead to avoid contact with the seekers. Long ago in earlier Epochs there was some method to the madness, for too long the inmates have been running the asylum. Wicked whispers and forgotten moments of lust are remembered here, vipers who braid whips with the leather skin of the dead call forth names from the Book of Life and the Book of the Dead.


    The massacres of Monotheism turned a vibrant paradise into an arid wasteland where staving children rob tombs and sell relics of the past to have stale bread and water to satiate their starving bellies and malnourished bones. The militarism of the radicals knows no end, wealth of generations was squandered into endless wars against invented enemies. Hounds yelp in anticipation of chasing the naked condemned through brambles and thorns, tearing bones loose from cringing phantoms called from ever-sleep to face trial by maniacs.


    To cleanse a land of multiple Gods you must burn their sacred groves. Lynch the wise hermits and loving village mothers. Nail the elder healer to a post by a broken jaw in the village square. You must dash infant Amalekite��s brains in with heavy bricks. Make horrific examples of the local temple priestesses and fearsome heroes of renowned. Whose bodies are broken, spiritually desecrated, whipped and slandered by intolerant Zionists and sufferers of the plague.


    Fugitive Saints and holy Martyrs are stoned to death, crucified upside down, flayed alive for entertainment of the Scribes and Pharisees. The ancient standing stones must be toppled, those who escape with secret knowledge must be hunted. Then comes the community leaders, the teachers, the elders whose wisdom of ages is a threat. A familiar story with any sect of ambitious Zealots who profit from the losses of the powerless.


    Once the first purge is done, there must be new and more radical interpretations. Peoples farther afield must be cleared, their wealth taken, their children enslaved. War makes many rich men, but that wealth is dependent on more battles and weapons to be forged. Armies to be clothed and riches to be looted. Gold and jeweled skulls are dashed off cliffs by grubby hands of the Sicari, Assassins and Sanhedrin. Self styled Saints, no better than Lynch Mobs and Looters, carving a new reality from the broken bodies of the ancients.


    Any time of instability is answered with in-fighting stoked by Lords and Bankers tied to the Holy-men who shiver like rabid dogs at the thought of torture and tormenting their targeted groups. Gleefully terrorizing vulnerable ethnic groups and wiping out populations of Native school age families who could be deemed threatening if allowed to come to maturity. Whose property has no protections they must obey. Tribes who never had contact are set against each other to burn the world again and again. There is no need for a winner, the weakening and destabilization of the region is the ultimate goal. Many must starve for few to live fat in hidden sanctums and unreachable fortresses.


    Withering winds and desolate cliff side habitations await the spiritual seekers. Strayed from the path of worldly passion, married to solitude in a unfeeling society that preys on ignorance. The last Prophet walks a road strewn with eviserated bodies from the most recent massacre. Piles of arms and legs litter as far as the eye can see. Lidless eyes of severed heads stare into oblivion from some place of last anguish and terror. Above in the sky great rings of spirits in endless procession wail lamentations from high in the atmosphere.


    The last Prophet is seized by the Hooded Figure of the head Sicari Executioner. The former psychopomp of wayfaring souls is now a vicious hunter of followers of the old ways. The Prophet is dragged behind a horse over a rocky hill. Skulls and bones litter the ground. The Prophet is kicked between Angry Soldiers of the Sanhedrin with vicious dogs who tear into his flesh and cloak. Beside a great pit, dozens of Mothers wail, nailed to inverted crosses at the lip.


    Sanhedrin whip and spear several juvenile Lions into the pit as well. Great pots of boiling oil hold still more of the persecuted artists, poets and unwise speakers of truths unacceptable by the censors of Zion. Hands and feet of the child Martyrs dangle around the neck of the dying. Tied to fluted Corinthian columns from a fallen fortress on this site, women wailing are branded and scourged.


    Strangled pleas for mercy come from the Phoenician heroes, Gnostic scholars, hermits and Goddess tribe as their holdouts are finally wiped out for all time.


    Beside a great fallen Watchtower, The Prophet��s hands and feet cut off and thrown into a pit with a dozen crying families pleading and praying for mercy, while crazed Lions savage others. The hooded figure wearing bloody rags of self flagellation reads the Death Sentence.


    Snarling faces raise large jagged rocks to smash the lucky victims to death. The glee of brutality and execution brings out the deranged. Thieves and bandits under the guise of Law scramble after spilled coins like corrupt police eager to divide up unreported findings. The ghouls flip through rare books for hidden notes before the Fires of Zion engulf history of the earlier Pagan traditions.


    At the lip of space, the God Mercury floating, looks down on this death strewn world. It was not always like this. Cataclysms of plague after plague befell this world that was once a sort of limbo for souls in transit, now it is a maelstrom of fear and torment that few ever exit. Mercury falling like a star from the heavens, crashes in an oily black sea, sparking the world on fire.

 Prelude: Dark Deeds of a Rejecting Mother

    Many years ago, deep in a Mexican coastal swamp near the ruins of Playa Bagdad, notable for being spelled without the H like its Middle Eastern counter part. A woman drags several small children to see the local Brujas. Witches, whose lair lies in hidden brambles deep in the gloom. Walking among pecking chickens, territorial peacocks and swooping fowl. Its a place that smells of rot and potent herbs roiling in cauldrons of human meat. Sharp smoke hurts the eyes and chimes of bones tinkle in sour wind.


    The Witches scowl from faces worn down by centuries of sin and vice. Picking rotting black teeth with barbed branches. There are three of them. Diana, Priscilla and Milagros. Each more grotesque than the next. Black cats, flightless crows and drunk goats wander about their hobbled thatch huts. These hags make offerings to the Goddesses of the underworld and witchcraft, Lamashtu. An entity that relishes in child sacrifice, cruel mothers and trading innocence for wealth. Sometimes they pray to a benevolent mother Santisma Muerte, the patron Saint of criminals and smugglers.


    There is no holy death here, only the horror of a half-seen world of furtive dealings with unseen Spirits. No one knows if they are sisters, just that they were deathless wraiths. Stalking the edges of towns, burial grounds and lonely cross roads for their prey. They trade in offering lucky coins to the gambler, candles to the mourning widow, victory to the craven and sorrowful delights to the depraved.


    Diana glides with an air of a noblewoman. The head witch wears others skin pulled taut over her face. Her hairline held on by staples and silk thread. A youthful skin covering wretched wood-like ancient bones. She is covered in ornate gold and jewels, a baroque death mask of a nasty Goddess, Hecate. Scars and signs of removed bulbous rolls of blubber cover her artificially thin visage. Her breath is hateful like rotting teeth, feces and cheap tobacco. She seems more at home in a tomb than sitting beside the warm golden glow of a fire in a swamp.


    She carries a spear impaled by human skulls, gold teeth and barbed thorns. She is regal, but her false youth mask betrays a ghoulish old woman who sees herself as an ageless vixen not a gnarled harpy. She is the leader of this cabal of craven whores. Rumor is her name was once Malinche, traitor to the Meso-Americans, leading a conquistador army into Tenochtitlan. Cursing her people forever in return for trinkets and glass beads. Only to die of Syphilis in the belly of a ship. Her remains thrown overboard to wash up on the same coastal Yucatan shore she was born, in undeath. Behind her is always a swarm of nesting botflies.


    Priscilla is much younger and far heavier. Veiled and seductive, vaguely European. Sallow with fat cheeks, stark nose and porky body. She might have been a beauty once. Pox and plague left her sickly. Like a corpse in the final stages of bloat. Pale and pasty like uncooked chicken. She only wears black formal evening gowns, they reek with a damp fishy odor like they were pulled from a bloated murder victim floating in a creek.


    Priscilla has a cherub-like face of morbidly obese fashionista framed by rolls of her neck and double chin. Her eyes and lips horribly colored in gaudy makeup made from missing children��s blood and soot from cremation grounds. Her gigantic bosom covered in dried blood and grease, her mouth full of malformed teeth, crooked and fang-like like spines grow from her gums.


    This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.


    Priscilla��s hair is styled with a ratty antiquated glamor only she sees, pinned over one eye in a farcical attempt at beauty. Covering one misshapen large and offset glass eye with a drooping lid. She carries a whip and feeblemindedly breaks out into cackling mid sentence and staring off into space like a crazed dog with yellow eyes. She is constantly snacking on fried intestines, noses and ears. Popping raw eyeballs in her oafish mouth like grapes from a bowl of red wine and mushroom sauce. She rocks back and forth in oafish oblivion. Maggots fall from her eyes and nose occasionally.


    Milagros is the smallest but by far most intimidating. Dirty and musky. Sweaty and strong from daily chores over a cooking fire and metal forge. She is squat and hunching. Deep black circles under her beady eyes. Long brutish arms covered in wild black fur drag beside her knees in a chimp-like subhuman gait. She is the cannibal cook, her face black with dirt from the cremation grounds. Self conscious of her descent into animal-like depravity she is constantly scraping the hair from her arms and neck with a dagger, pulling long black hairs from her neck and chin.


    You get the impression she was born of a werewolf bitch in heat, or sired by an escaped gorilla and a feral bat. But you can��t quite place why her goblinesque snout and large ears fill you with unease. She picks sores on her flesh with dirty nails. Millagros smile is like a condemned convict staring longingly at a victims family in court, wishing for one more chance to rip them apart. Picturing the victims children��s plump flesh and picturing their corpse spinning over a low fire. Self conscious Millagros hides her bestial body under a threadbare black shroud, shy and quietly anguished by her lot in life. An extra set of webbed nubby fingers at her elbows and leathery black wings fall from her armpits.


    This ritual was part of the Mother��s vanity. Desperation to remain young and thin inspired treason of the highest order. Selling children is the most vile of crimes. The witches never seemed eager to take her children. They would come up with far fetched requests about birthdays on the solstice, or specific birthmarks, or some magical quality that the woman didn��t understand. If they wanted a child with 9 toes, 11 fingers or born a hair-lip; she was happy to attempt alterations. But the witches seemed to be toying with her. Whispering to each other and breaking out into fits of laugher.


    They had no use for unfortunate children in a country full of them. They also had no specific love for inadequate mothers when they are capable of grabbing lost children off the roads themselves. But they did know a wealthy American with contracts to the Government who had a use for their trade. They were not sure if his desires were magical or some kind of deviancy, but he did seem happy to take on unwanted children to work for him.


    The Mother begged to pass off some of her 8 children, but only the youngest seemed to have the kind of spirit the witches wanted. They decided to wait until she was almost of age. This was not helpful to the rejecting mother. She wanted less mouths to feed right away, and she always felt an anger at this girl who seemed to never have a rainy day gloom, or react to her emotional terror tactics like the older girls.


    This infuriated the Mother and finally when a deal could be struck she was happy to sign in blood. Unfortunately for her, the gods do not take well to this kind of endeavor and cursed the mother more with hair and sagging features for her acts of evil. Her habitual smoking of hashish and opium give her a sleepy drawl, leaning and drooling as she tries to sound witty. Coming across as a hawkish double dealer.


    The youngest Girl could wait, now there was a deal on the table for her second and third sons to be gambled to the fates, the fourth son too dim to be claimed by the witches. Maybe they could use him to carry buckets of water or build chicken coops but he would not do for magical incantations that require a perfect child. The child traffickers have long scoured the wastes for the unfortunate and sick. Reaping the riches of plagues and lands plunged into political turmoil.


    The Mother could not bring her self to condemn her oldest son like the others. She held out. But two less was a win and maybe she could recapture the vigor of youth from the witches. She was happy to make the arrangements, sending them to join a war band that would bring them to the arranged time and place set forth by the fates. She hates being second guessed by these bitches, she quietly threatens to bring in the authorities if her demands aren��t met. A double dealing spite sends her into wrathful black moods, undeserved beatings for children on weeks where she is with out tequila and wine.

 Chapter 1. October 1915, Lower Rio Grande Valley, Mexico.

    The day Dorotea Galia was kidnapped started before dawn. She struggled to wake up with the roosters crowing. Sleep paralysis has always been a problem in her family. She had been having night terrors. Strange dreams of a dying Angel, a wounded Lion roaring in darkness, the burning body of a woman with eyes like jewels in the sun. Dreams of her family with haunted eyes propped up in Post Mortem scenes for a photographer with a missing face and crippled hands. Of a Gypsy Fortune Teller screaming over a child��s corpse in ruined chapel beside a violent sea.


    She often dreams about the undead. Singing spirits in the marshes, Vampire children at play in cemeteries at dusk with moldy skin. She feels watched by hollow eye sockets and fanged snarls, whispering psalms from the Bible with raspy voices only the the dying can hear. Ghouls missing noses beckoning for her to join them in the darkness beneath garbage strewn piers in a boardwalk pavillion fallen into the ocean. Of things only a grown woman should know to avoid. Violence inside a great Temple in Jerusalem, a voice that sounds like someone with a cut throat calling for help in a language lost to time from inside a coffin being carried to some unholy purpose.


    Sometimes she dreams of the end of the world. Being alone on a vast seabed, a dark figure far off walking towards her that terrifies her to her core. The dark figure has 4 faces, that of a ferocious mare with red eyes facing north. Facing west a shrieking hawk with green eyes, the eastern face a goat with blue eyes and although she couldn��t see it. To the south she knew the final face out of sight was an angry spirit with a crown of gold and eyes of fire whispering curses in a language of magic made flesh.


    Each time she blinked the figures red eyes were significantly closer, making her stomach twist in knots and her muscles spasm in panic. Suddenly the hellish creature loomed over her, three times her height seizing her with clawed hands, engulfing her in leathery wings. Its body was made of malformed metals and rock ore formed into blood soaked fur, thorny like a rose bush and crawling with ticks. A rancid stink burned her nostrils and eyes until she was choking on vomit in her throat.


    Behind her like a whip across her back, a column of Angels suddenly blowing trumpets on shining cliffs, wind that brings terrible destruction. Tornados made of black wood and bent iron beams sweeping towards her, whipping up rushing waves 70 feet high. Of a Circus drowned in marshes, bloated bodies rocking back and forth, ebbing in-between dead trees in the creeping tide.


    Clutching her messy sheets in panic, feeling some impending doom coming closer, dragging a cart of missing children. Of Tarot cards showing men impaled by swords and swinging from lynchings. Spirits illuminated in lanterns stalking behind mourners in a ritual to contact the dead. Faces cold and white.


    Between the world of sleep and her true life. She can feel herself mumbling, answering voices in the wind. She can hear her Mother��s hoarse smokers cough, roosters calling the dawn and somewhere Vaqueros singing on their way to cross the river for ��trabajar�� in El Norte. The sweetness of morning soothes her. Crickets have turned to train horns mournful call from far off in Texas. Struggling to free her self from some creeping phantom. She shakes her self free from haunted dreams and allows a moment of peace after hours gasping for breath in the night lands.


    Her Mother��s cramps and convulsions startle her, starting the day with insipid threats, howling and coughing. Banging on the wall for a glass of water. Dorotea makes the sign of the cross and smiles. Her neck was sweaty and her dress sticking to her skin from wetting the bed. Feeling ashamed but happy to be free from endless hours of tortured sleep in her humid makeshift bedroom.


    Dorotea lives in a shanty town beside a southern dipping creek branching off the Rio Grande where sunken Mexican Navy boats lie just under the surface, that double as children��s playhouses during the dry season. She hid her collection of gold buttons, coins, her favorite doll and went out into the dark to do her chores. Gathering buckets of water from the river, sheering lambs and picking fruit.


    Dorotea can hear bells from her sheep and chickens fighting. Roosters go into rages and attack the goats and ewes, making all the animals irritable. Soon it will be time for Birria soup if Mama hears them. Dorotea��s favorite is Navajo Jacob. A mighty Ram who has 6 crazy horns growing in all directions, golden eyes and smiles at her like the grandfather she never had. He is a good sheep and more than once has interceded when another goat or rooster tried to startle her from behind. Jacob is very calm and is the grandpa to many of the sheep. Mama hates him.


    This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work.


    Dorotea has 4 Brothers, most of whom left to join the Mexican Revolution that had been going on 5 years. Except for her oldest Brother who was in the US Army. Only Roberto the fool, the thief, the cat strangler and her three Sisters remain. Their little hovel is made from recycled wood from when a hurricane tore down a large fishing village before she was born. The house looks like it has burned down and been rebuilt over generations of less and less skilled carpenters.


    Her family has modest crops, a couple trees of bad fruit and vines of sour grapes. Still a blessing as many have nothing to eat and must travel into the Estados Unidos to escape blight and starvation. Many girls here turn to prostitution for ��gabachos�� in Texas. Despite abject poverty it is a pretty place where butterflies and song birds dart among wildflowers on the banks of the Rio Bravo.


    Dorotea was like a slave in their leaning little shack. She did not dance or sing the old Spanish songs her family had long survived on, singing for the gringo farmers parties in Brownsville. Dorotea had other talents, art, poetry and had an easy way with taming fierce animals. She was born in 1899, practically full grown she was still nymph-like, seeming more at home in flights of elfin fantasy.


    Dorotea��s dreams were so real, as if the promise of adventure and travel was a song in the wind. She mused about being captain of a ship on a voyage of discovery, the conductor of a train cresting wild mountain passes, to one day be a scientist who saves the lives of multitudes and maybe be the first to document new wonders in the far vistas of the high Himalayas, distant Borneo and the deepest Amazon.


    Her Mother Laurena ��Reina�� Luz, now plump as a balloon was once the ��Beauty of the Rio Grande Valley��. A mean spirited but glamorous woman in her youth. Reina ran away with a traveling Wall Street land speculator. Coming home pregnant and rejected, she learned to hate her life and any sparkle of joy in her children that reminded her of her lost youth.


    Soon her Mother married Reynaldo Hidalgo Rivera-Orazco. A charming man who wore the most expensive Mariachi suits you have ever seen. Came sweeping into town with a band and took the broken woman with her bastard son on the road for years. Making good money but spending it as fast as they made it.


    Before long Dorotea��s Mother was pregnant and her days of singing in the touring band were over. She was sent to raise their large family at his families abandoned ranch in a nameless Colonia on the western outskirts of Matamoros. He was orphaned young and inherited cattle and lands that had fallen into disrepair long ago.


    The state of Tamaulipas rests on the Texas border overlooking a fork of the Rio Bravo, where the border snakes and shifts towards the eastern wetlands. Together Laurena and Reynaldo had 5 more children.


    Reynaldo Hidalgo was an unwise drunk. One night he followed angry group of cowboys into the street for a fight and in the morning he was found savagely beaten to death. Dragged down the street until every bone in his body was broken and stabbed multiple times. No gringo was ever brought to justice.


    Lastly Dorotea was born after a tryst with a traveling Frenchman who was in the area looking for work as a banker, but in reality was one step away from the law after a series of schemes and long history of violence all thought the Southern US.


    There was also the matter of suspicion of murdering a French heiress in New Orleans and fleeing with jewels, treasury bonds and family heirlooms. He was such a liar the family never learned his true name. His story changed depending on who he told it to. Might be a blessing he didn��t teach his wickedness to his young daughter.


    His time with Dorotea��s Mother ended after a whirlwind romance when Dorotea was 3. US Marshals dragged him off the hang for a crime he spent his last moments on earth denying. Something about pushing railroad inspector off a train trestle in a botched robbery. That not only stole nothing, but got all his co-conspirators caught, all laying blame on the ��Frenchman�� who escaped.


    All her Father left the youngest child with was a last name, ��Galia.�� Deriving from the ancient name of France, Gaul. He was a pleasant man despite being tricky and seemed like he had genuine affection for his new family, was never unkind of the other children of earlier courtships. The house had an easy calm at home.


    Dorotea was the most lovely of the sisters, gaining the eternal hate of her mother. Despite her mothers lack of English she knew a few phrases like ��Little Whore�� that she used frequently. There was no cause for this hostility other than her mother projecting her inadequacies on her daughter.


    She was universally seen as an Angel by the towns people who noticed her kindness, honesty and work ethic that none of the rest of the family had. Her face and arms were dark from long days in the sun, the color of rich cinnamon and her hair had wisps of honey blonde.


    Dorotea was happy on the surface but always watched with a long face the trains leaving beyond the horizon, the travelers crossing the border to see what opportunity the big cities of the US had in store. She would walk beside the train cars and look in on animals en route to farms, slaughter houses and traveling carnivals.


    She wondered about the world, history, modern inventions and far off lands. She was an avid reader of victorian fantasy works, and was wise beyond her years. She had a fairy-like light in her eyes, wandering the hills and valleys of spring like an Angel of Mercy for injured animals and even migrating birds would stop to frolic beside her in ponds, shaded glades and bubbling brooks.

 Unnumbered Chapter: They All Knew And Didn’t Warn You

    Today was a most unfortuitous day. Even the wind and the sky seemed to mourn the coming change in her life. Angry clouds built great heights as if to warn of straying too far from safety. This was the day she got the fatal attention of the Circus millionaire Hiram Tiberius Barstowe and his European Circus.


    An Englishman of ill repute. Known for cruelty and battering his employees to death on a whim, throwing drunkards to Lions and tossing missing children into his trains boiler in fits of rage. He has a Lion Tamer on call named Manheim Eidelman who walks the edges of town with a barbed whip and blood stains on his hands.


    Barstowe was a brooding and cruel man. Top heavy, with spindly thin legs that moved far too fast for such a morbidly obese body. He was an angry man with a double chin, streaks of wild white hair. He always wore a top hat, pin striped suit with tails, with sleepless circles around his eyes seeming to be much older than his 67 years. Walks briskly with a heavy cane headed with a silver Elephant with ruby eyes. A cane notorious for bashing brains out of beggars, thieves and pickpockets.


    Barstowe is always flanked by his 3 advisors. The Abyssinian, a mysterious Ethiopian Holyman. The Arabian, a traveler whose origins beyond the mystic sands and lost cities are unclear. The Hindu, an Aghori Sadhu adherent of Maha Kali Cult.


    The Wisemen would never speak to any one but Barstowe and glared as passers by with a ferocious hate unhidden by any pretense of class or honor. They seemed almost like wraiths, so silent and stoic they always seemed to be watching, unblinking, speaking only to Barstowe in conspiratorial whispers of malice and ill intent.


    Any time there was a dispute about money or contracts not honored the Wisemen would converge on the accuser and whisk him to some antechamber bellow the bigtop to count out the missing coin. But the accuser would rarely be seen again, in the same state.


    Maybe years later you could guess one of the geeks or mindless freaks could be familiar in their mutilation shows or chasing mice and stray cats to eat among the garbage pits behind the carnival. Wisemen he picked up while touring the ancient cities of the Middle East along the Silk Road.


    Barstowe was consolidating the local traveling Carnivals on both sides of the border. Buying up Tigers, Bears, Exotic Birds, Freak-show acts, Fist Fighting Clowns. Mighty Amazonian Snakes and a group of man killer lions that had put their original Circus out of business with a series of serious maulings up in Wisconsin that made the animals dirt cheap to the unscrupulous Barstowe.


    His ancestors come from some long extinct house of central European Royalty. Intermarried with the Saxe Von-Coberg rulers of England, Dukes and Baronets of Poland and Austria. They made their money as arms dealers. Reselling deadmen��s horses and cannons. A fertile trade among the mass graves of war torn sacked cities and plague ridden ghost towns of the middle ages.


    Be it rumors of plague or endless war. There was always hidden jewels and stolen wealth among the burning remains and boarded up houses of the dead and dying. Stolen treasures from the crusades in dry wells, huddled skeletons of persecuted religious orders in fields, lost mines and fallen fortresses. The Barstowe family seemed to have a distinct Godlike foresight for discovering vast riches from moldy bones and clutching hands of lost travelers in shallow pits and stark cliffside accident scenes.


    Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.


    Barstowe comes from a long line of Circus Impresarios, his great-great Grandfather Wolfgang Albrecht Batorowscu ran a Circus in the time of Shakespeare that traveled from Moscow to Brussels and settled in the region of Burgundy and later London. Touring the battle weary towns of Europe during nameless wars. Collecting all manner of bones, armor, swords, shields, banners and orphans to join their performers. From the land of the Turks in Wallachian mountains of Romania and deep gloomy Russian steppe his ancestors have travelled. To the heart of India and the edges of coastal Yemen. Growing ever richer among the Incan holdouts of the Andes and distant Borneo in the Indonesian archipelago. Skulking among ruins of the ancients in the Aegean and Asia Minor.


    Bartowe has stalked the lonely trails of the Himalayas and spent moonless nights on mountain tops calling to strange spirits in Tibet. He has sailed seas with Pirates and made deals for arms with Maroons. Took Opium from Afghanistan to smoke with Kings and Ladies of the fading Royal courts from Siam to the short lived Chilean and Argentinian kingdoms of Araucania and Patagonia. His life was like the nightmare version of all of Dorotea��s dreams of adventure and travel. A cruel trade of knives in the night and ropes around the necks of the unweary.


    He has known Habsbergs and sat with British monarchs in the tombs of their Stuart rivals. His ancestors made millions cajoling and making plots for infiltration, networks of spies and saboteurs. They walked with Queen Ann and Bavarian warlords, traded spiked wine with Thuggee and white slaves with the Hungarian Cossacks. Explored wind swept tundra by Camel and Ox cart collecting rare books and epitaphs from the libraries of Alchemists burned alive for their knowledge.


    He speaks a dozen languages and keeps books on dozens more. He is a collector of books and curiosities, he has an enlightened gentleman��s taste for all things ghoulish and depraved. Any time of conflict his wagons seem to come along to pick from the dead and entertain the wounded. His ancestors dined with the Ottoman Sultans, with Napoleon and famous Bandits of the coastal lip of Spain and the British Isles.


    Barstowe��s family has a reputation as silver tongued devils. Cunning with eyes as ferocious as any predator. He loved tales of barbaric acts, had a encyclopedic memory for historical executions and torture. He loved to talk about the Spanish Inquisition and Imperial Chinese methods of justice like ��death by 1000 cuts�� or ��death by elephant.�� Talking by firelight of ritual magic and esoteric hierarchies of angels with the Catholic and Protestant elite. He founded secret societies and speculated on the meaning of dead languages last diatribes scrawled on temple walls. But the Americas were the land of the future.


    Barstowe was growing weary of mundane life on the dusty roads of ignorant and backwards customs. His interests were hunting, adventure, grave robbing, mountain climbing, finding lost tombs and traveling among the sands of the strange and distant kingdoms on the off season. His acts weren��t drawing the crowds to learn their futures in the ��House of Spirits��, the freak show was hemorrhaging money as the freaks had a never ending list of severe medical maladies. The Animals kept killing trainers and slowly but surely the rumors of missing children in each city they went through followed the Barstowe European Circus. Like a dark rain cloud looming just out of reach and the troop would break up their show and hit the road before the law could ask any questions.


    Barstowe was now thinking of turning his carnival acts into a theater production touring the major cities. With the invention of the Movie Camera and Lithograph it was possible to show illuminated pictures of the circus and cut out all the traveling costs. He could permanently camp the show down in their winter quarters in Matamoros, and move the picture show around theaters in cities like Chicago, Detroit, Boston, Manhattan. He fancied himself an artist, seeking out young women to take studio photos and his private train.


    He would offer all the spectacle of the show in his brand new attraction ��the moving picture��. He was able to buy reels of film from great happenings around the world, but there was a darker lust in the audience for executions, war and the erotic. Things unheard of the polite world of the first decades of 20th century. Much of Barstowe��s dark intentions were obvious, but despite the air of ill intent unscrupulous mothers would eagerly push their daughters into visits with the photographer to do artful nudes and recreate orientalist fantasies of ancient Greece and Egypt.

 Unnumbered Chapter: Los Desaparecidas de la Frontera

    Dorotea had her own goals for the day, seeing to the sick Baby Pony on the Moran farm. She loved working for the grandmother Nann there who let her have the run of the place. All day she could play with Bunnies, Ducklings, Chicks, Calves and Baby Goats. She got paid too. The old woman knew Dorotea��s mother was cruel and took all her earnings, so Grandma Nann paid Dorotea extra to save, for her future. She even gave her jewelry and rings that were old fashioned but still very nice.


    Dorotea was always glowing when leaving the job, she felt hope for the future and cherished visiting the comfort of a loving home where sweet smells of warm food always came from the kitchen. She would bring home banana bread, cherry pastries, carrot cake and fresh fruit but her family was ungrateful, would take everything she had and chastise her for not bringing more.


    The fateful day is when she woke to see her mother meeting with Barstowe and three Brujas talking before dawn about her joining his troop. Dorotea had heard of three loathsome Hags down in the swampland named Pricilla, Diana and Milagros who sell missing children to wealthy Americans.


    Rumors say they also stole body parts and eat children who strayed too far on the Passover, Purim and the Sabbath. Dorotea thought it was just a story that the child hunting Brujas lived in a underground Crypt in a flooded graveyard was another myth, a Blood Libel.


    A horrible fable to keep children from exploring ruins at night or swimming after dark. Like the La Llorona, a vengeful Spirit who haunts the Rio Bravo to drown children playing too near the banks. Or the nights of the year Ghostly soldiers returned from an old Spanish Battlefield��s that had long grown over to be marshland to come to their villages and feast with their families.


    Old Witches who collect bones and bodies to sell them to shady doctors couldn��t be true. Not in the U.S. or Mexico, maybe in India. All the missing children must be due to some coincidence. The theme of neglected children who must beware of dark forrest��s and abandoned Temples is the same all over the world.


    Here there is a singular threat of becoming prey, part of the thousands of yearly Los Desaparecidos. Untold missing or exploited along the Mexican / American border as if some Maelstrom of Hades opened to claim the unloved and unwanted to some unknown abyss. A howling wilderness of hungry eyes and heavy souls watch the unwary.


    This wasn��t a story to scare children. The Witches and Barstowe were really here, and really talking about her. He had drawn up adoption papers and her mother eagerly signed. Dorotea feeling terror and betrayal ran into the dark with her pet bunny Ophelia.


    As she dashed away down the country road she heard yelling from her bedroom and angry eyes peering from the curtains. As she reached the end of the collection of shacks that made up their nameless village, she would see the motorcar of H.T. Barstowe racing down the road. Lanterns bouncing on the dirt road like hellish golden eyes of a wildcat about to pounce. Dorotea dashes off the road into a irrigation ditch. Barstowe turns slowly, eyes darting the darkness looking for Dorotea. Two large black dogs leer from the cab of the motorcar, ready to seize her in pursuit.


    Her bunny Ophelia is spooked and jumps from her arms crossing the road into a cornfield, the dogs leap from the Model T motorcar and rush into the darkness. Barstowe lights a cigar, his eyes hawkish in the red glow. Dorotea sees the eyes of submerged Alligators. Blinking slowly but patient. She inches away, crying silently for her Bunny who sacrificed her self for her.


    This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.


    She tries to navigate the grassy berm and not fall into the water. Losing a shoe she makes it about 40 feet behind the Model T, the farther away she gets the more bold she gets making noise, finally in the blackness of the morning bellow a scarlet sky she dashes towards the Moran farm. With a crooked fat finger Barstowe adjusts his mirror and sees her silhouette running into the burning dawn.


    All day she has a gloom over her work. As she brushed the animals and said goodbye to the newborns and her small bit of joy in her dismal life. She thought of the scary clowns with bloody knuckles and soulless eyes. The angry Lion Tamer and his barbed whip. The evil looking guests of the Barstowe Circus. She knew the truth of it. Older girls had been paid handsomely to take pictures, or entertain wealthy men. Still others were never heard of again. The border has always been known as a place where people and whole families disappeared suddenly.


    H. T. Barstowe��s grandfather Lord San-Bartholomeo Batorowscu started their American operations nearly 100 years before. Sometime between the war of 1812 and end of the Mexican American war. Hiring fugitive scalp hunters from the notorious Pike & Chamberlain gang to secure their place on the prairies and lonely roads of the still wild and unsettled 19th Century.


    These marauding cowboys were once hired by the US and Mexican governments to seek out and make war with massacring tribes on the border who had carved a bloody trail across the wagon trains West. These criminals were not careful with who they hired or told their abusive tales to, instead of limiting their butchery to raiding bands of Apache and Comanchero horse thieves. They would hunt down any one with black hair earning the hostility of Texas Rangers and Mexican Army to hang them wherever they found them.


    There were terrifying groups of ruthless killers like the Glanton gang. A militia formed of veterans of the Spanish American war. Ex-law men fired for too much drink, shooting men in card games and whoring. Who took up a gruesome trade in ridding the territories of all Indians. Well known to be just as ferocious as their tribal foes, they were double dealers, slavers and vicious in every imaginable way to men, women and children. That was long before, they would have to be pretty long in the tooth to still be on the run, hiding out among the ruins, abandoned churches and day laborer camps here.


    It was a common practice to see staged crime scenes of massacre. Meant to frame the Mexican peasants, who they saw as no different than Indios and Raiders. Leaving shrines decorated with bloody skulls beside roads, flags made of human skin strung from poles and leaving bizarre motifs like flayed bodies of families arranged playing poker in recreation of the Last Supper of Christ. A ghastly sight to come to a burning farm with shrieking victims skinned alive, mutilated and telling tales of white men painted like fearsome clowns carving off long strips of flesh for their bounty trade.


    Rumors among the peasants of massacres by men in clown paint spread to children to not be caught alone after dark. Drifters and Carnival folks had committed atrocities in their former lives and still had the hungry eyes of ambushers and bandits. Known for such malevolent acts in isolated homesteads. This area was always plagued with war, and mercenaries willing to burn and plunder lonely ships and migrating families had no background check. This is who was coming for her��


    This scared Dorotea. The Carnies certainly looked guilty of these horrors. She was becoming a woman but nothing terrified her more. She was immature and small, not even as big as a teen. At 16 she looked more like 12. She knew her hateful Mother wanted to be rid of her, reminding her of her lost youth. She was beaten a million times for invented transgressions, accusations and outright lies by a mother who loved to bully her.


    Dorotea knew this was another act of abuse, some kind of malicious joy her mother felt in hurting her. Her mothers smile was never friendly, it had a glare of hostility just under the surface. A burning rage of lost dreams, burning envy, inadequate spite and a dark soul. She knew now she was sold into prostitution, and nothing would stop her from fighting to her last breath to stop it.


    She thought of her oldest brother Xavier, fighting in the streetlights. Despite being the most renowned fighter in the valley, he was kind and took time to counsel her. Many a day sticking up for his baby sister. He knew she was a tomboy, so he taught her all the dangerous things he knew about how to throw a nasty punch to put someones lights out, how to reach a mans lung through his armpit with a knife or how to push in the eyes of an attacker who has already gotten too close.


    Dorotea knew today she would have to fight for her life, and she did but it wasn��t enough.

 Chapter 2. The Dead Lands: Also Known as The Land of Nod

    Dorotea awoke in fright with dust in her mouth. Choking, she felt dirt and sand under her eye lids and in her nose. She couldn��t breathe, trying to sit up she was bound somehow. Opening her eyes through the pain she could feel ropes and belts around her arms. She couldn��t see clearly. She smelled something dank, muddy, rancid. She realized she was rolled in an old carpet.


    She tried to scream for help but an oily rag was in her mouth. Panicking she tried to wriggle free. Just then something huge bites down on her legs. She feels her ankle twist and in terror she remembers the Alligators. Just as she comes to, hears the subtle sounds of a river, splashing of some large beasts slinking into the water. She also hears a train horn far off.


    Wind and lightning but something familiar. Sniffing at her ear. She knows that breathing. It was Ophelia. Her Bunny had escaped the dogs and was now sticking her head in the carpet, licking her face and chewing on the rag tied around her head. Ophelia frees her and just like magic at that moment Dorotea��s bonds break and she is able to sit up. Struggling to make sense of this new reality. She is reborn in a new world, the ��after life,�� bellow a burning train bridge.


    Smoking ruins of the Circus all around her, Lions roam freely, Elephants glide through the river, Tigers chase darting Birds and everywhere the blackened corpses of Clowns and injured Carnies. The moans of the dead and dying fill the air. Somewhere a Fortune Teller laments the death of her child, the broken bodies becoming a well earned meal for the beasts whose first taste of freedom came via a derailment and series of boiler explosions.


    Climbing up the embankment, the sky is strange. There is black gloom over the land. It is a place she had never seen. Horrible smells like burning hair and decay fill her nose. Reaching out to Ophelia, petting her in thanks. Dorotea realizes sees that her fat baby Bunny is bigger than her, the size of a bear!


    The same innocent eyes now massive and unblinking. Ophelia��s white coat now matted with blood and mud. She now sees the Alligators in the water are all dead, Ophelia silently fought and killed them. Her flat teeth that only chewed carrots and old shoes had done a number on the Alligators, leaving wounds that look like those of an Axe, removing heads, arms and tails into a sticky mess of coppery smelling wounds.


    Dorotea feels a joy so strong in her heart, she feels like her body could explode and fly into the sky. She is saved! She could run home, gather her keepsakes and find a new life away from the abusive life she had. Maybe she could ask the Moran family if she could live with them or maybe they could hide her long enough for her to save up to buy a ticket to Europe. She always loved the stories she heard on the radio about princesses and kings, great wars and works of art and culture. She wanted to walk the stone streets of Rome, see Naples, Prague, Vienna or Brussels.


    As she walks she sees strange vistas on the horizon. Ruined domes and spires of cities far off, burning pillars of black in the dingy brown sky. A harsh wind comes from the south, hot and full of harmful debris. She thinks back to the news papers she would keep from the Moran farm. Pictures of burning cathedrals and centers of government looted. Neoclassical edifices of grandeur reduced to mausoleums for those who did not escape.


    This is not the coastal Texas of her youth. Searching the horizon for some useful landmark to gain her bearings. She sees skeletons tied to wagon wheels at the top of poles, cages of dying women suspended above the road, burning bodies in piles litter the countryside. She thinks this must be the Great War, somehow she has travelled to the battlefields of Verdun or the Somme.


    Dorotea knows stories of the war, attrition, men fighting over the same ground in trenches, gas attacks and air raids. She can��t see a battle, just the endless rows of craters, barbed wire curled like a dead mans fist. She sees a sign in at the cross roads that reads, ��Road to Damascus - East, Temple of Sidon - West,Tyre - South, Byblos / Baalbek - North.��


    She has no shoes and her feet weep blood. The stoney ground biting her soft soles. She has the urge to find a pair of shoes but the thought of removing them from a rotting soldier is too ghastly. She comes to a dead tree with a massive Black Stallion tied up. The horse is wild eyed trying to dart away as she approaches. She hums a melody that calms its spirit. The Stallion is injured, arrows pepper his hind legs, dry blood and mud cake its face.


    Dorotea is astounded as everywhere around the horse are gold coins, thousands of them, with rubies and brilliant sapphires fallen from saddle bags on the ground. Seeing an empty pail and brush, she wades into a deep pool to her thighs, as she gathers water she locks eyes with a corpse. A drowned young man, maybe a year older than her stares blankly, eyes an icy blue, mouth curled into a last scream, pale face leaching a sickly yellowish tint into the water.


    As thirsty was she is, she cannot drink it. Beside the pool she sees a wagon cart, covered with a green canvas blowing in the wind and the same gold coins spilled every where. She sees a pile of dead horses half way in the pool. A bomb must have hit the convoy as they fled the battle. Returning to the Stallion she brushes his mane and tries to dab his filthy wounds. As she does the stallion drinks from the pail of dirty water. She is too tired to stop him.


    After a nap and some jerry rigging, she has gathered up all the saddlebags of the dead horses onto hers, that she has named Octavian after the ancient Roman Emperor. The burden too great to carry her and the 8 gold laden saddle bags she walks leading the horse. She has also rigged the first wagon and a second wagon of weapons and gold to Ophelia who is smart enough to understand her important new duty pulling this new found riches of a dozen trunks of diamonds and gold.


    The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    Seeing the precariousness of her situation she also gathered some armor from beside the road. A sparkling horned faceplate for her horse and black rings of chainmail she drapes over Ophelia��s back. She thinks makes her look like a fine knights escort. She finds a large rifle she decides not to handle unless she has to. Also a collection of arrows removed from Octavian��s back, and a number of spears. She feels the day fade and the heat of the day turns to bitter wind. Seeing farms burning in the distance. Dorotea wishes she had removed a uniform from one of the unfortunate dead. Just then she sees an explosion ahead and hears the growl of an engine.


    Two planes come into view, they seem to be chasing each other. One is a Red Biplane with 2 sets of wings, the other is dark and moving too fast to get any detail other than what looks like the snarling mouth of a great beast on the front. After minutes of clashing, bullets flying and smoke choking from over worked engines one of the planes comes smashing towards her, crashing parallel to the road.


    The Pilot laughing as she approaches. His face black from soot except where he has removed his goggles. His plane is riddled with bullet holes. She tries to ask him where they are and whats going on but he is shouting in a language she doesn��t understand. He pulls a large ring from his finger, blood red stone! The size of her nose! The plane has crumpled, the engine still croaking and growling as the propeller has lodged into the ground erupts into flame. The pilot makes a face like this is expected, he struggles with his safety belts with his dagger long enough to realize both his legs are broken. He curses to the heavens and remembering he is in a little girls presence, tries to make a joke she doesn��t understand.


    Now the Pilot is weeping but continuing a monologue only he understands. He hands her his face mask which is a gleaming white skull. With a series of pops and sizzle a fire breaks out in his cab. He smiles takes off his fur lined ace jacket, handing it over, then his remarkable boots fastened with a gold chain across the front, lastly his gleaming spiked helmet. The same style black and gold spiked helmet General Ludwig Von Hindenburg wore at the Battle of Tannenberg in the news papers. The Pilot waves sadly after a hearty chug from a flask of brandy shoots him self in the ear.


    Dressed like the Red Baron himself, Dorotea resumes her trek. She decides to stop and get some sleep. She sees a stone Cathedral on a hill, in the dying light. That looks like a safe place to set up camp. As she approaches she sees the hill around the Cathedral covered in hundreds of crosses, many of them with women and children nailed to them.


    As she nears the door of the Cathedral she gasps as a writhing black mass breaks apart and flies away revealing a murder of crows feasting on a Deadman nailed to the door. His chest full of arrows, face totally desiccated. Mummified in a state of anguish, lipless teeth gnash from beyond the grave. Around his neck, his severed hands hang from a leather cord.


    She must free him to open the Cathedral. Finding a hammer at his feet she struggles with the large square bolts fastening his hands to the heavy wooden door. With struggle and several minutes of work she bends one nail and begins to pull it out, slipping she tears off her finger nail and spurts of blood mix with flashes of pain.


    Her mind struggles with the overpowering the pain her finger feels. It is like an explosion in her mind. Collecting her self, she tries again, whimpering in pain. With a massive jarring lunge she removes one nail, the body crumpling, now dangling from one impaled arm. Removing the final nail is done. Pushing open the large doors, she sees a dark hall that goes on forever.


    Going through the contents of the pocket she finds a pack of cigarettes with matches. She finds a torch on the ground and hesitantly ties up the Stallion. Inside smells of roasted meat, sweet candles like old fruit and wax. Skeletal bodies of priests in colorful robes surround the entrance way.


    Beyond in the dark something gleams like glass on the alter. In the pews endless rows of blackened parishioners litter the church. Scurrying rats, spiders and slithering maggots seem to be gorging on the dead at prayer. The roof has fallen in at the back of the church. A large stone sunburst that once held a large circular stained glass window now lets in wind and starlight. At the alter is a throne with a Giant Corpse sitting in it.


    The Dead Giant wears a Horned Crown, in his dead fingers a gold cup. His face a skeleton��s smile, unblinking eyes made of glass. This is a jeweled body of a once mighty King, left in an ossuary of worshippers sent to join him in death. This place has an unholy feeling. Dorotea just wants to run into the night but her eyes keep going to the jeweled cup. She seizes it timidly, but she imagines the kings eyes on her. She imagines a fetid breath on her face. A plaque made from baroque styled glass, gold and jewels falls and shatters that reads, ��Sorsos The Damned.��


    Recoiling she seizes the cup away and falls down from the raised platform. The Giant King falls forward revealing a large golden sword stabbed in his back, now standing straight up from the crumpled corpse. She wants to run, but she feels as if this sword was waiting for an eternity for her to take it. She pulls it free and dashes out into the night.


    After the embers of her fire ran down she had to go to the bathroom. Her back hurt, her bones all felt like they had been bent to the point of almost breaking and every bit of her body was bruised. She felt like she had been rained on and ice caught her breath in the air. She felt like yesterday had lasted for centuries and her life before was a distant memory.


    As Ophelia the Bunny and Octavian the Stallion placidly dreamed and made happy noises in their sleep from dreams untouched by the torment she felt. She thought of the Dead Giant and the Deadman nailed to the door, the drowned soldier in the puddle and the bodies of horses left to rot.


    She only saw death a few times when a mouse was snapped in a trap, or a woman from the town caught tuberculosis and suffocated in her sleep. She saw lamb killed once, it was like watching a crying child being tortured. She never wanted to think about innocent animals being killed for food but she could never bring her self to give up meat. She was always hungry and it was better not to ask or have an opinion of her Mother��s cooking. Once her Mother broke one of her older brothers fingers in a door and pretended it was an accident. The She-Devil smiled every time she recounted the story to her oafish, fat and loud alcoholic friends.


    The thought of the Deadman nailed to the door didn��t sit right with her. Of all the bodies laying unburied she thought that at least she could try to bury one. She used matches to find a shovel on the cart and walked back up the hill to the Cathedral. On the body was a notice scrawled in blood over the dedication to Artemis, ��Beware! Hecate! Baalim!��


    The Deadman��s body was punctured by a dozen arrows, both eyes were poked out, hands cut off. He wore a strange dress coat, black with age. No insignia or piece of its original color escaped the caked blood and mud. It was a under the burgundy and crimson stains, a grey military uniform with gold laurels on the collar regal but out dated piping on the chest like a Napoleonic Hussar jacket. Ornate with gold ribs, braided flourishes on arms and but missing many of its buttons.Once it was a handsome uniform, now torn to shreds and black with putrid blood like the man had been whipped to death and dragged behind a horse cart.


    She couldn��t do it now. It was too horrifying to handle this dried out mummified corpse in the dark. It had a satanic air of hostility, the whole place, the hill the church, the fields beyond had a cursed feeling. Like a silent stirring of all that is sad and hateful in this world.


    She resigned to go back to sleep.

 Unnumbered Chapter: 1906 Kansas: Blue Flames on the Prairie and the Crying Woman in the Creek

    Manheim Eidelman loved his job. A couple times a week he could really hurt somebody. He was skilled in flaying men alive so delicately they scarcely bleed, he knew about dislocation and stress positions. He could hang a man so all his weight was at an angle where he had to suffer extreme pain to breathe, and then had to rest in a way that caused his ribs to constrict. Alternating between life saving trauma and tormented lapses in breathing with out sleep or water for days until the nervous system short circuited.


    Manheim preferred the old fashioned beating. Knuckles, wet leather straps, branding iron and boots on shivering flesh. Leaving the subject broken and doused in cold water over night, until the elements did the deed. He was the Lion Tamer, but that really means he disposes of bodies. When the Fist Fighting Clowns get carried away, or a local tough guy offends the Carnies he is right there with the Elephant hook. Something between a fire poker and a lead pipe with a barbed end like a medieval club. It was useful to break legs, pulling a floating corpse out of the water by the eye socket or shatter a cringing mans forearms and teeth.


    His job was cruelty, interrogation, catching runaways and torturing the cheaters. Manheim enjoyed watching bodies torn to ribbons by animals. He loved seeing what a train could do to arms and legs. Flattening necks and folding bodies in ways that seemed impossible like a twisted screw. Women, children, priests, police, rangers it made no difference to him. Food for the wolves and stray dogs that prowl just out of torchlight.


    Manheim grew up in Hungary, his family had already fled Elisavetgrad during a Cossack purge against his people in 1881. He watched his Mother and Father burn to death during a Blood Libel accusation in his village. Hundreds of families homes were burned that night. He only escaped because a group of youths at his back window hesitated as his mother threw him into the unknown. He can barely remember when he came to the Circus.


    Barstowe must have smelled blood in the air. He was trained as a butcher to feed the Tigers. Then he was the shit shoveler. He did all the jobs, he was even a Fist Fighting clown. Manheim has always had to keep an eye on the Fortune Teller. Esma... She had a tendency to try to escape. He always enjoyed manhandling her roughly. He never forced him self on her but he could. He pinched her breasts, strangled her, whipped her face with belts and injured her spine once so badly she spent an entire pregnancy unable to walk.


    Manheim wasn��t sure if he was in love with her, or if it was lust. He could barely look women in the eye since a firestorm in Norway scarred the left third of his face. Causing a deformity of a third of his face. Skin that looks like purple zebra stripes in a long series of X patterns from his chin to his ear which was missing. He was Barstowe��s spy, torturer and executioner. When he was alone Manheim would repeat her name in a mantra. Esma Bireli over and over again. She was a gypsy and came from a detestable place in the world not that different than his.


    On occasion Barstowe has a rage and wants her humiliated. He will either have to wrestle her down from horseback, or tie her up for the abuse of the Carnies. Barstowe likes to take his dinner while witnessing a prolonged whipping, while making snide quotations from the Bible. Her spirit nearly broken he left her in Barstowe��s library collapsed on the floor among candles and strange markings in blood.


    Tonight was another escape attempt. The Fortune Teller had taken to crying spells and become so despondent that she had to be chained to the desk in the ��House of Spirits,�� to keep her from cutting her self. Inside the House of Spirits there was a ��Magic Lantern Seance.�� Barstowe had added a corpse photography side business. Families would bring dead loved ones to be posed among the family in a life like position. The photographer was a man born with deformities so profound he was covered head to toe in bloody rags.


    There were many tricks to create the air of life on the recently dead. Barstowe was quite the industrious merchant of death. He had a train car specifically for bodies to be cleaned by beetles and later sold to medical schools in the Northeast, Ontario, Mexico City and as far afield as London. ��Barstowe��s Premium Bones�� had an ornate bass label on a waiting stack of crates. Another of antique weapons pulled from the earth at sites of slaughter.


    Barstowe led the show in the ��House of Spirits.�� Giving oratory about his travels and studies, showing photos of Post Mortem photos superimposed onto pictures of the loved ones. He was able to project ��Spirits�� among the audience. It was a horrifying show. During one such event the Fortune Teller was laying out Tarot Cards decorated with Corpse Photos and something disturbed her. She knew it was not all a confidence game.


    It was staged to seem like a parlor trick. Enough to get the skeptic to sooth his wife with scientific explanations for the wind that picks up in the room, for the shrieks of saints and the maligned who are pushed out of their body in possession. There must be some unseen hands shaking the floor, blowing out candles with a bellows, scratching the walls. People would pay well to see their daughter alive, so talk to a husband taken by war, or ask a grandmother about buried jewels or a deed hidden behind a wall.


    The fortune teller Esma Bireli, hated this show. She didn��t mind reading cards or horoscopes. She wanted no part of rituals to bring back the dead or attempt to control ancient spirits. The chalk used to draw magical incantations and sigils to hellish kings and demonic warlords made her skin crawl. Voices from Beyond the Grave are not something to visit lightly. The ��Holy Guardian Angel�� ritual of Abramelin the Mage specifically. Esma remembers the Bible verse. "Beware, your old enemy the devil... stalks the darkness like a roaring lion. Seeking whom he may devour." That is Barstowe and his brood of demons.


    Esma hated the worm-eaten books Barstowe made her copy and transcribe from Arabic and Greek. Lemegeton known as ��The Lesser Key of Solomon The King,�� Shams al-Ma''arif known as The Sun of Knowledge, The Book of Higher Spheres, The Grand Grimoire of Le Dragon Rouge, The Shahnameh of Ancient Persia, Gh��yat al-?ak��m, which translates to ��The Aim of the Sage.�� They smelled of decay, like they had been wrestled from the grasp of a warlocks tomb. She had learned to undo the shackle around her foot hidden by the table cloth. A hairpin or a sewing needle was enough to unlock it.


    If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    While Barstowe was raving about his connections to the spirit world and Solomon��s 72 Demon Princes, she knocked a Lantern over and in the resulting fire, escaped into the chaos. Out in the night she felt alive. The cold Autumn air she was unable to hold her pain in. She fell down beside a creek and wailed into her arms to keep from making so much noise she would be easily caught. She knew it was inevitable but she needed moments alone to keep from killing her self. She thought about it often. She felt a little comfort near flowing water, the beach at night, flowing rivers and rushing waterfalls.


    Esma has always had a way with Spirits. In places of carnage, former battle grounds, sites of massacres or political violence she felt eyes on her. She could see restless spirits all over the west. The Americas like Europe and the Middle East were one giant endless graveyard. Where most see spring flowers and mountains in eastward flowing mist. She sees Indian families peeled of flesh, wailing from the beyond. She sees wagon trains burning and women being savaged and stabbed among the rusty bolts and charred wood of a massacre site from decades before. She would panic sometimes. Often she kept her composure but more and more when Barstowe would fixate on a victim. She remembers the terror and pleading first hand.


    As a medium she was prepared to hear the life stories of the restless dead. She could not stand is being cornered by angry spirits while in the bath or alone in the woods. Esma would feel as if all the restless undead he has killed before were peering from the other side. Even in bright daylight there seemed to be a scratching. A twisting in her chest and creaking of the boards in the room. It was as if the edges of reality were bending, the foreground and background shimmering. Time and space melted away in a stir of echoes. Her head feels like it is slowly spinning, just enough to make her sick.


    Esma loses all depth perception and falls to the floor. She tries to crawl away but like shadows in the dusk she sees morbid visions of casualties, their eyes reflecting light like owls. Esma hallucinates an eclipse where the sky runs backward, the cloud vibrate with powerful energy. Silver, peach, purple, orange, gold eyes in the dark. Wounds dry and skin pale, teeth bloody with their last breath turned into an endless alarmed state of unrest. The stars bleed a putrid discharge, dripping hostility and a million hateful eyes open at once at the corners of her vision.


    It��s too much darkness. Too powerless in her own mind. She grasps a torch and dashes into the Amaranth and Coquelicot colored Autumn dusk. She runs as far as her legs will take her until she feels a tugging in her right side from a heart mummer that has always impeded her hurried movement. She walks among the reeds by the creek in the moonlight. She comes to old gravestones. It smells sweet here, some last romance of the summer lingered. Fresh flowers in a vase, frankincense and myrrh comfort her, much more pleasant than sage. Wild licorice grows here, wormwood and nightshade bloom in the light of the harvest moon.


    Esma loves the gothic beauty of graveyards from centuries past. Angels of Death and Cherubim do not guard this simple frontier potters field. Humble granite edifices, angular names black with age. Moss grows here. Rain and time make some of the more fancy marble stones almost smooth. Names lost to time. Farther out she sees wrought iron victorian fencing low to the ground marking a particular families plot. She sees oblisks made of pink and vermilion rock of different sizes and widths. Some just taller than her, others double her height. Esoteric symbols exude a feeling of awe, some strange lost teachings.


    Esma can��t guess the date but knows at least here, these spirits are at rest. Farther down she sees a dull light dancing among the floating logs and decaying leaves in a stagnant pond. Following these blue flickers into a field she feels untroubled, more curious. Meandering down a deer trail up a rise she comes to a place where the crickets and night birds are so loud. Wiping tears from her eyes she smiles at the pleasant moment.


    Something unnerves her. Esma feels eyes on her as the wind picks up. The branches of trees strain and crack. In a pool of darkness there is something unpleasant. Something that gives her pause. A stillness washes over the prairie as the last wind bends the willows and leaves. Her torch struggles to stay lit. In the bushes small animals thrash and scurry among the the shadows all around her. A large owl comes flapping down from the black sky in a threatening and territorial display. Another and another land in the trees around her. Stumbling backwards she is harshly grasped around the throat.


    Turning around and lashing out her hand hits something moving. She sees the corpse of a ghoulish witch, with eyes of fire that glow from sunken pools of darkness. Older than her and smelling of old earth and decay. She feels a name come into her soul. ��Hecate!�� Almost as if it was a snarling whisper, like a splinter in the middle of her foot digging deeper, like her soul is being penetrated by a spiders teeth. She feels a buzzing in her head like a parasitic wasp in burrowing through the membrane in her nose and ears to reach her cerebral cortex. Her teeth suddenly hurt. A sharp shock of pain in her throat causes her to bite her tongue, a fast trickle of blood rushes down her chin.


    The spirit named Hecate�� is horrifying.An ancient corpse with skin so grey it��s almost purple. Her fingernails brown and hands stained of rancid blood. On Hecate��s head a crown of green bronze infested with snakes and tree roots, brambles and thorns. Leaves and dried insects like a nest of spiders. Her face covered by cobwebs to the point of looking like a wedding veil. She reaches for the Fortune teller with skeletal fingers. Hecate is somewhere between nude and covered in a burial shroud. A body mutilated and proudly displaying a menstrual flow. Around her neck half decayed skulls various animals, birds and human infants.


    Like a nightmare Hecate rushes up to the Fortune Teller and twists one of her fingers until it breaks free. A wash of pain and terror comes over her like cockroaches running down her spine. Moments go by and she comes to her senses alone by a babbling brook. Trying to psych her self into not screaming.


    Esma tries to think of the name of this little town. She can��t help it, the pain is too severe. Flashing light and pounding of her heart beat makes each pulse of pain in her hand feel like a infernal roller coaster is pounding in her loins to the tips of her feet, tingling the most abject suffering around her aura. Wailing beside the creek she stumbles bleeding from the wound on her hand.


    Esma never sees Manheim the Lion Tamer as he stalks up behind her, clubbing her unconscious like a seal on a beach. His mind too dull to see spirits, he has no idea the Evil Spirit watches him with cold eyes from some plane of existence between the underworld and lands not visited by the undead.


    Esma awakes panicked in The gypsy wagon as it tilts and a creaks over a bumpy road. She grasps an amulet to ward off the evil eye called a Hamsa, with a doubled thumbed palm with an eye in the center made out of her birthstone. She prays for a way out of this dismal life. The bleakness of her situation can��t go on forever. There must be some Angel watching out for her. Some curve in the path of life to give her a way out.


    Opening the window it has started to rain, she soothes her kicking baby in her stomach. Esma tries to focus on the rain, the cool air and not think of the ritual knife or the burning Tophet that await this unborn Angel. She plans to plead to keep at least one. Barstowe could let her keep this one pregnancy to see the child grow and feel the joy and pain of living a full life. This time she is willing to do what ever it takes to ensure it.

 Chapter 3. The Hangman of Zion

    In Dorotea��s haze of sleep, dreaming of a heavenly Angelic chorus playing merrily in a bed of fat white clouds. Dorotea was suddenly being pelted with coins by some adolescent Pagan gods. Feeling they were not laughing with her, she floated down to earth and started waking up. She felt sweaty and hot from the sun, but also damp in her shoes and clothes from the mist of the early hours before sunrise.


    A name came into her minds eye like a musical whisper of chimes in the wind. A song filled her soul with golden light and a name. ��Ashtoreth�� It felt familiar but she couldn��t remember the context. Still being conscious she was sleeping, of the hard soil, the pointy rocks, bugs darting around her face, wet grass soaking into her back and skirt. The dream of coins being tossed at her like a beggar on the street kept repeating in her head. Curiosity led to abject terror.


    Dorotea felt blinded, the brilliant dawn seemed to be shining millions of miles directly into the space between her eye lids. She was jarred by a shadow walking between her and the reddish dawn. Her eyes hurt so bad but panic made her dart up and grasp the golden sword she had pulled from the corpse of the Giant King. In the white strobes of light and pounding pain behind her eyes she sees the Deadman from the Cathedral��s door inspecting her camp. He is opening chests of treasure with his stumped arms and clinking coins onto the ground. She yelled ��Stop that at once! Those are mine!��


    The Deadman, who was nailed to the Cathedral door whips around in a combative stance. ��Who said that?�� His voice like rusty chains echoing at the bottom of a wishing well. She leaps up, unsure of her next move but feeling a boldness in this netherworld she never felt in life. ��I said that thief!�� The Deadman��s eyes hollow slits of suspicion. His sightless eyes searching the area before him, but he eases his tense posture and smiles with his skeletal lips. ��I am no thief, Im just not sure whats happening or why I am here.�� Dorotea feels sorry for this creature now, even in death there is no rest here. ��There is more than enough treasure to share, but you must ask first!��


    With useless arms the Deadman starts to reach bellow him to have a seat and says ��I have no use for your treasure, I was looking for my eyes and hands. They seem to be missing.�� Dorotea is puzzled, she remembers the body, covered in arrow wounds and distinctly remembers that he had an arrow in each eye. Which she knows is fatal, and one look at this dead man you can see its been many years since he held the breath of life.


    This is puzzling to her, it should be more scary than it is at the moment but adrenaline and the hubris of youth keeps her from fleeing and running as fast as she can. She decides to make a friend of this unfortunate soul. With a sewing needle and fine silver thread from her dress she reattaches his wretched hands.


    ��What color were your eyes sir?�� The Deadman now sitting on a log and feeling around his wounded chest, tapping the arrows that must be puncturing all his major organs. ��Well, I don��t remember exactly. Red I think.�� Dorotea scowled. ��Red eyes, nobody has red eyes.�� He hesitantly pulled at an arrow and grimaced, instead breaking it off, he said. ��My eyes were Red, and my hair was white as a dove. I had a condition where light was painful to me, and my skin was so pale you could see my heart beating through my chest.��


    Dorotea felt deep spiritual terror. She had heard of sickness, flues, plagues and viruses. Blurting out, ��Oh no, is it contagious? This morning the light hurt my eyes so, i felt like i had had them beaten black and blue.�� She said in a mournful tone. He laughed ��No, I was born with a condition. I had no pigment in my skin or hair or eyes. Albinoism isn��t contagious. Not like the Plague or Leprosy we have in these parts.�� Remembering she knew so little of this place. She asked ��Where are we and what is your name?�� He seemed puzzled. ��I can��t remember any thing other than the color or my eyes and the way that i died.��


    Stumbling, Dorotea scrambles backwards into the grass. ��What do you mean, the way that you died?�� He isn��t listening to her any more, standing he seems to be searching for something, trying to hear a clue or trigger a memory of who he is and where they are.


    The Deadman says ��I don��t remember my name. I do remember I was a Zealot. A Sicari, an archer. Executioner for the Sanhedrin in the Holy Wars. I was the last officer left from a massacre on a hilltop. I was tasked with hunting all the ancient enemy. I had executed them where ever i found them. One day i was wounded, fleeing as my company died around me. Taking an arrow in the knee they captured me. I was martyred for the faith here at this Cathedral. I remember the evil smiles of the enemies and their cruel jokes. I remember being whipped and stoned, dragged behind horses. I don��t think i died here. That place was more beautiful than this. I remember the sounds of birds and wind in the trees, then i felt arrows puncturing my lungs and heart. Cursing them with my dying breaths.��


    Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    Dorotea feels tears in her eyes. ��Thats very sad. My brother��s father was a musician and died in a fight with cowboys. He was also dragged through the street and stabbed. Left to drown in a puddle of green horse water beside a saloon.��


    The Deadman thought about that. ��I always wished I was a musician. My sisters played the lyre and flute. I was more of a reader. I liked books and maps.�� Dorotea interrupted him. ��Does it hurt to die?�� The Deadman flicking a coin between brown dry fingers. ��Of coarse, it hurts to die. But not as bad as living. You feel your heart struggling to beat, you feel your lungs shuddering for breath. You feel panic about everything you forgot to do, or friends you want to say goodbye to, places you want to go, promises you wanted to fulfill. Then you feel a calm that takes the sadness away. You feel a far off warmth and something pulling you towards every mystery you ever wondered about being answered and all your regrets falling away like pieces of broken pottery. Life is like a sharp piece of glass you hold in your hand so tight you feel like you would rather splinter the bones in your fingers than let go, but then you drift off to sleep. Im sure evil men feel a more sudden startling fall into hell, but maybe i am an evil man, and maybe this is Hell.��


    Dorotea shudders and says, ��This couldn��t be Hell, my pet rabbit Ophelia is here and she has no reason to be in Hell.�� He smiles ��Yes, this couldn��t be Hell. This is the land of Nod, where the noble murderers go.�� He smiles, smelling the air. ��You are right, I feel a cool wind. I can sense butterflies and life in the air. This couldn��t be Hell with the smell of flowers in the air.�� Looking around the world seems pleasant and full of possibilities again. They both smiled and sat quietly while the birds sing.


    Later in the day, excitedly she says, ��Ive got it! I found the perfect eyes for you!�� She comes running up to the Deadman putting two giant rubies in his hand. He considered them, turning them and holding them up as if he could see. ��Well, thank you young lady. Slowly opening his eye lids one by one he put them in his eye sockets. ��How do i look?�� She smiled but the effect of two shining red eyes gave off was unsettling. She lied. ��You look splendid, like you were born to wear them.�� The Deadman took a deep breath and coughed out a gust of cobwebs and dust, but now he was whole.


    ��Well young lady���� He said. ��You have my thanks. I bid you farewell.�� She grimaced. ��Wait, you can��t go now. I need you to help me find a way home.�� He thought about this. ��Well I suppose I have no home, I have no hurry and I am as lost as you are. I will join your company if your horse and rabbit will have me.�� Dorotea twirls around in a happy little dance. ��Allow me to introduce my pet bunny Ophelia, my horse Octavian and I am Dorotea Galia, pleased to meet you.�� She offers her hand to shake and he takes it in a gentle and friendly manner. ��I am pleased to meet you. Im sorry but I have no name I can remember and I don��t know from where I came.��


    They break camp, but taking one more look around Dorotea finds a great hunting bow. Offering it to the Deadman, he takes a solemn tone. ��Ah yes, a tool for the work of death. I had hoped to live in peace for a while yet.�� Dorotea busying her self stowing fallen coins and ropes. They descend down the hill into a vibrant country of wildflowers. She sees orange, blue, purple and red flowers on little hills going off into the distance.


    She feels so painfully hungry and thinks way off yonder she spies orchards. Across a valley of golden mist a great vine land of bounty laying at the foothills of glowering mountains. The sky ispurple clouds holding a great storm. Deciding between the war torn low lands, the seemingly haunted hill of ruins, graveyards and burned Cathedrals or the high country of orchards, rivers, groves of vines holding berries, she decides food must be the priority.


    They begin walking along a long disused road between fields of ruins covered in flowers. She sees an apple tree with not a single good fruit. Every apple is wormy and full of rot. Seeing the clouds nearing she feels an urgency to look farther into the distance for something edible. Thunder cracks in the sky and the day darkens.


    As they walk she discovers the road they are on is made out of skulls, or pieces of broken skulls turned to gold, or maybe fools gold. All far too heavy to lift but bringing an ominous mood. What evil power would it take to turn mens severed heads into a golden road?


    The Deadman finally speaks, ��My father was a miner. These hills remind me of places learned men go to find great hordes of precious metals.�� Dorotea sees a small rustic farm cottage nestled between more apple trees and beyond a meadow of berries.


    The Deadman puts up a cautious hand. ��I remember we were told to burn the ancient groves of trees. The priests and scholars said that Evil Spirits dwelled within. In them hold alters to the Goddess Artemis, lover, twin and loyal warrior of the Goddess Ashtoreth.��Dorotea is puzzled. ��Who are these Goddesses?��


    The Deadman answers. ��Artemis the virgin Goddess of war, the hunt. Her darker manifestation Ashtoreth or Astarte, the Blasphemous `Queen of Heaven��, ��The Mother of Whores,�� a fertility Goddess from the old times before the law of man or the knowledge of good and evil. The oldest enemy of my people and my God.�� The clouds have now sent the first drops of rain. Dorotea frees the animals from their wagon loads and starts to find a meal for them all. In the distance the little cottage has a flickering light in the window.

 Chapter 4. The Goddess of the Wood

    After a large meal everyone except her fell asleep beside the road. Seeming unbothered by rain she decided to explore. Walking amongst the trees she sees many different kinds. Some smelling good and others not so good. Among the trees set deeper back, and down a tumble of large roots she sees candles burning. A shrine of a large Winged Goddess with a crescent moon crown stands in the heart of the largest tree.


    Many other minor Goddesses have shrines all around, the way they are set up you can only see them from within. Its impressive, offerings of food and drink lay on copper plates beside wreaths of flowers and many old coins, turned green from the elements. Wanting to honor the shrine she puts a coin at the foot of the carved Goddess.


    Just then a slow wind picks up, blowing chimes in the trees. Dorotea feels intoxicated by the air and the sound. Feeling like she is one of thousands of strands of grass blowing in a gentle breeze. As she smiles and closes her eyes, a furtive sound alarms her. A twig breaking.


    Dorotea feels suddenly like she is being hunted. Calmly she looks around into the distant trees and begins to feel like an ominous movement all around her is coming closer. Looking around she sees the trees are formed from the withered corpses of people, each tree holds the form of a Tormented Soul, twisted and curled into bodies suffering eternity in anguish.


    Losing all composure she runs as fast as she can to her companions, but the way she came in seems different. Where a simple path led up to the cottage is now ugly brambles of branches and thorny vines. She sees blueish faces, with yellow eyes. Subhuman like some kind of feral ape in a children��s story.


    Then she hears Great Wings flapping and just as she looks back to see a black mass of Blue-headed pursuing Primates and horrible Bird Women she knew from greek myths were Harpies. She hears a huge crunching of wood splintering and a horrible knotted arm grabs her by the neck.


    Lifting her almost to the top of the tree line. An angry face glowers at her. She notices now a horror beyond her imagination. On every tree branch are impaled bodies, pecked apart by birds and beasts until they seem almost like they have shriveled and become the same wood as the trees. She remembers tell of a bird called a Shrike that takes small mammals and sticks them on thorny trees to eat alive. Is this to be her fate?


    An awful Old Man��s face on a Burning Tree Spirit stares at her. The titan creature has fiery eyes and a mouth curled into a well of hate like a deep volcano. His visage is like the horned Celtic God of the forrest. Cernunnos, the burning Tree Spirit screams. ��Wait!�� At once the primates and ghoulish Harpies screech and flee. Dorotea loses consciousness. She vaguely feels wind on her face and movement above the treetops like she is being carried by a great bird.


    She awakens in the cottage. Its warm from a fire in the hearth. The roof is a mangle of trees and branches open to the sky and in a mesmerizing ray of light an Angel comes down through the opening in the roof. A golden glow of the Angel-like being is too dazzling to look at. A Fairy Goddess from a story book with smiling face, with skin clothed in the black and sparkling stars of the universe, eyes like rays of the sun.


    The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    A warmness comes over Dorotea from within. A sacred inner feeling of safety, of love and nourishment, of everything she never had from a mother or any one at home other than Grandma Nann at the Moran farm. Dorotea realizes this is the Goddess Art��mis. Dorotea was wise to leave a coin on the alter. Still unsettled she also notices dozens of monkey heads peaking in and naked harpies flocking around the roof. Most startling is the giant Burning Tree Spirit standing behind her whose every move is like trees breaking in a storm.


    The Goddess says ��Do not be afraid. That Burning Tree Spirit is Cernunnos. He comes from a time when a much earlier Planet Earth collided with another World from deep space on an elliptical orbit of untold millennia. Creating our Moon but destroying a verdant paradise in the process. That is where the Garden of Earthly Delights known as Eden was obliterated. Cernunnos, God to the Druids and first Mysteries could be called the ��Oldest Spirit or The First Tree�� a guardian spirit of all forests.The first seed and the oldest of all my allies. All of these creatures are my messengers. Although they would have eaten you immediately if you harmed by sacred woods, they grew curious when you honored my alter. The children of men have long turned against the old ways, burning my groves of trees and chopping down my alters.��


    Dorotea falls into tears. ��I don��t know where I am, I don��t know whats going on. I just want to go home and run away to find my brother in the Revolution. Is this Mexico?�� The Goddess smiles. ��I don��t think so. This is a place where very few of the living ever go, and the restless dead are waiting to learn the things they don��t know.�� Dorotea looks unsure but wide eyed.


    The Goddess thus spoke ��Our land is divided between the Epoch of Taurus in the North were The Queen of Heaven once ruled, long before the common era. Persephone, a young Goddess of Spring and Fertility was stolen away to the underworld by Aries, The false God Yaldabaoth. Creating a dark period of frozen Earth during the Winter Solstice. There was a civil war between the gods Aries and Mars that burned our land for centuries. Aries the Ram was once my nephew, but raised a great revolt. His Epoch is to the West land of smoke and sacrifice. The South is contested, the Epoch of Pisces. Overtly ruled by The Fisher King, but he is an absentee lord pretending to be dead to run from his duties. The armies of Aries: The Ibex Storm God, ��Who blackens the noon sun.�� Runs freely to murder and rape in his absence. There is a long war between them over who will lead the living. Both are short sighted and follow savage practices outlawed by the old traditions. We all await the coming Epoch of the Aquarian age that will create a new world to the East where now only the dead ancients live in a city from before the creation of the universe. A sad remnant of a wholly different version of reality, an obsolete tradition that is remembered by only the wind and sky, mountains and the sea, living in memories deep bellow the sediment.��


    Dorotea feels her spirit lifting from her body and floating off into the forrest. She hears the Goddess voice. ��I have a very special journey for you Dorotea, and if you do this for me. I will see to it you have every thing you need to return home and reach your wildest dreams.�� Dorotea sees giant plants growing souls in embryos like seed pods. Red hearts and minds floating in a purple cocoon.


    The Goddess continues ��I have a Champion who fought to his last breath to save our people and was murdered. His body is strung up from a gallows in the heart of the City of the Dead, it is a great city that has fallen into the Ancient Eastern Sea. Its temples rise above the water so you will find it easily.�� Dorotea has an image in her minds eye of a glowing red soul, a young boy made out of star fire and molten glass, his life and becoming a soldier, hiding his light in a suit of a Black Knight. His body now hanging from a gallows with a blacksmiths Anvil tied to his feet somewhere deep under an oily black sea, surrounded by Jellyfish, Bobbit Worms and Angler Fish.


    Dorotea awakens feeling unhappy and unsafe. She is laying beside her friends. Looking up at the stars in the sky she wonders about the infinite amount of stars and if her brother is looking at the same sky somewhere else. She looks around to the moon and thinks of all the times she had to walk home in moonlight. She wonders if the Fairy Goddess was a dream or if the grove of trees and cottage were real. She sees a shooting star and wishes she could understand what was happening and if she could just go back to the Moran farm where she was happy and where the days held such wonder and mystery.

 Chapter 5. The Dead Sea

    Crossing the great Obsidian Mountains was easy going, having to ford some deep rivers and climb steep lifts was harder for the animals but they seem to find a way around any time the need to climb a sheer cliff they were already waiting at the other side. Coming to a high place she spies an Alter to Aries carved of stone. Vaguely that of a man, with a Ram��s Head and a cluster of horns both curled and straight came out of his temples, atop his head a golden Sun Disk and an Obsidian Serpent. The offerings were all the hands of children and eyes of animals. It filled her with a deep hate and she kicked the offerings to the ground, throwing the idol from the cliff to smash far bellow.


    The Deadman stands at the edge looking beyond to a vast crashing black sea. Multitudes of boats and statues litter the shore. It is a violent place of great tempests and harmful currents. Remnants of a great city dot the shore. Black Marble and Glass shattered, only great monoliths to the dead remain. Skull faces and corroding metal leave a legacy of some far distant lost civilization once stood, now only the oceans violent whims rule here.


    Scaling down cliffs of volcanic glass with threads of metal ore they reach a coast of black sand and broken monuments. Fearsome statues of Gods of Death stand three fourths submerged in an oily tide. There are bones every where and great flocks of black birds circle the sky. Dorotea is wondering how they are supposed to travel into this Dead Sea, but a shred of a memory comes back to her. Artemis told her if she believes she is safe, she will be.


    Dorotea shuddered at the massive black waves crashing with no predictable size or rhythm. Waves 10 feet tall would be followed by none and the second she attempts to wade out a wave 50 feet or taller would be building on the horizon and sweeps up to her so quickly its all she can do to not be torn to bits. When she is truly bold, she runs out into the tide only to be crushed by a wave that was nothing impressive but she felt its cold pressure rolling her like a bug and she had to bite her tongue to not scream when it bent her hip all the way out of its socket and dropped her onto her back so hard her ribs pop when she takes a deep breath. The Deadman and Animals watch from the beach smiling with well wishes and a wisdom to not tangle with stormy seas.


    Defeated Dorotea cries on the beach, shivering and unable to walk from cramping legs. The day seems lost until a glow comes on the horizon. A giant woman of such regal beauty and boldness arrives from the clouds. ��Who are you?�� Dorotea says. The giant woman whose skin and hair look to be chiseled from white marble says. ��I am Demeter, a helper of Ashtoreth. I came to help you find the City of the Dead, known in old times as the Necropolis of Tiamat, the ancient Dragon thats dead body made the known universe.�� Dorotea wondered how she will breathe under water. As if it was said aloud Demeter answered. If you find a great enough crystal on this beach, I will enchant it so you will be able to breathe under water.


    Finding crystals was easy here. It seemed like any where you stuck your hands into the black sands hand falls of quartz and amethyst were bountiful. Seeing an outcropping of rock a ways off Dorotea found a pool where the tide had left dozens of crystals of all shapes and sizes. Pyramids, Cones, Boxes, Ovals and complex geometric shapes she doesn��t know the name for. Finding one that looked like a black dagger with all the colors of the rainbow within it. She returns to Demeter who sees the choice and approves. With closed eyes and a complex gesture the enchantment takes hold. Together the two of them bid farewell to the Deadman, Octavian and Ophelia and wade into the now calm sea.


    Bellow the water it is any thing but calm, the current pulls and pushes far more strongly than any wind. Dorotea is battered and scraped by gouging rocks and sand. As they walk deeper into the depths Demeter creates a blue sphere of fire from a golden torch she had slung from her waist on a chain. The light is not predictable, the way it burns not like fire on land but like water that has come into contact with a burning star, washing out and ebbing with the flow of waves like a whirlwind of blue lava streaking off into the blackness.


    As they come to an even plane Dorotea almost chokes on water upon seeing an endless field of bones. The place truly is a ��City of the Dead,�� but these Dead aren��t inert or still. The Dead here walk bellow the waves. Shrouded figures walk like families on a pilgrimage or day at the market. Skeletal figures going about their daily business not alarmed or angry at their presence. A few look their way but most seem to be working some crops under the sand, or mining glass from the rocks.


    More and more statues fill the sea floor, the footings of walls, stair cases of buildings long knocked down by the waves, farther off structures still erect. Towers and toppled walls, designs no sane man would build. Moving into tunnels and doorways they pass the carbonized corpses of the original inhabitants, turned to glass in poses of horror and fear, recoiling from from horrific fate long before the sea existed here.


    This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.


    Demeter is able to communicate with Dorotea telepathically, telling her to ��be certain of your footing, there are giant fish here called Stargazers that can take the shape of something else to hide and seize you into an underground lair, that no one can save you from. There are also nasty worms with faces like scissors that will try to lure you with pretty light and flowers and will pull your arms and legs off and eat them in front of you.��


    Coming to the crest of a steep drop Demeter says, ��This is where we part, I have my own task to attend to. If you enter the valley of Columns, The Hanged Knight will be in the center. But that is also the feeding ground for animals that have no name and a place where the Dead are no longer friendly.�� Dorotea looks down and sees the area is guarded by luminescent Jellyfish and Black Anglers whose forehead lure is Azure, illuminated to bait predators into becoming prey.


    Dorotea asks, ��How will I light my way?�� Demeter silently hands over the torch made of starfire and burning glass and turns away to seek her own way. Dorotea starts down the chasm to the lowest level of the Underworld. She comes to great processions of the Dead, Skeletons walking among more statues. The statues here are of great edifices of execution. Carves spectacles of beheadings, people burning at the stake and being torn apart by beasts, all lovingly carved out of stone. She sees the Knight, but he is encircled by Bobbit Worms, their colorful lures only betrayed one the exposed ones actively feeding on sea life.


    Dorotea wonders why these death scenes were so important as to be immortalized in such painstaking detail. Among columns and a maze of fallen fortresses and a forrest of every manner of Deity, Dorotea feels watched by the great bug eyed fish that patrol here. In these putrid depths plants become fossils.


    Dorotea has an idea to distract them. She takes a handful of gold coins from her pocket and tosses them to the feeding worms. Causing such a violent stirring that the sea floor becomes black with swirling debris. From the black cloud, horrid mandibles lash out, a feeding frenzy of centipede-like worms lashing out at each other searching for the source of the coins. Crawling to the Mausoleum of dead and dying creatures she is trying to not touch the writhing legs of worms clashing all around her.


    Among the chaos, Monstrous Fish were tearing each other to pieces, eyes and hunks of gils and fins were falling all around. Dorotea is wildly crawling as fast as she can and hits the top of her head into the ancient gallows post unleashing a white flash in her head followed by streaks of blood.


    She falls unconscious.


    When she awakens the water has cleared but purple and pink innards of fish and worms float back and forth in the current. Seeing the Black Knight now startles her. His armor is covered in wings, from his helmet, back, feet and hands. 12 in all. His armor is bent and blackened not from dye, but some horrific heat that malformed it into a mass of spines, cracks and jagged edges. Once it was a suit of great majesty, now looks as much like a broken stump in a forest fire than hardened steel made by fine craftsmen. Above him a plaque ��Mercury herald of Mars, Traitor to the Fallen Star.��


    Taking the Crystal Dagger she shimmies up the post to free the Black Knight who is battered endlessly by the current, held only by the rope around his neck and the anvil tied to his feet. It seems like such an insane thing for a man to be suspended like any mundane execution, but being far underwater in the blackness of a city whose name no one knows. The surreal horror of it almost breaks her mind. She has to focus on staying calm, because her enchantment to breathe in his place relies upon her confidence it works. Any panic or doubt would spell drowning and being lost to the violent tides.


    On the top of the gallows she tries to cut the rope, but its not any ordinary thread. Its some kind of metallic barbed vine like a rosebush, Impossible to cut. She sees the fish and worms have settled into their ordinary hunting routines. Just as the thought of the worst thing that could happen now, it develops before her eyes. The light of an Angler comes from behind her shoulder, just as the flowery glow of the Bobbit Worms lure appears bellow the Knight.


    As Dorotea tries to roll off the top of Gallows, an inky mess burns her skin as a nasty Cephalopod seizes the Bobbit Worm, taking hold of the Anvil tied to the Knights foot. While this is going on, several more Angler Fish have keyed in on her from above. In the tumult the Cephalopod tears into the Bobbit Worms head, ripping it half way out of the ground. The Black Knights body is wrenched free from the gallows and flung into the dark waters just out of view.


    This has disturbed something massive that made the entire sea floor shudder. Hateful Magenta eyes open where once the sea floor had looked like edges of a great wreath nestled between cliffs of black rock. She knew before the world turned sideways that this was the mighty Stargazer ambush predator. As Dorotea has her arms snatched from each side by a swarm of Angler Fish, whose giant glass incisors sink into her soft flesh deep. She closes her eyes and expects a sharp tearing of her body while she is eaten alive. But through her eye lids instead there is a great light streaking by.


    Demeter has joined the Fight, with a younger goddess that could be her twin, except Demeter��s hair is sparkling white and Persephone has deep brown almost black hair. The Goddesses are wielding whips that crash into molten rock when coming into contact with sea life. Brutality is unleashed as broken bodies of Fish, Worms and Cephalopods are vomited form the great furious mouth of the Stargazer. Shattering rock and great physical forces of cataclysm rock Dorotea. Human bodies can only take so much, her fight is over. She is flung about in the torrent of earth shattering forces around her.


    On the sea shore beyond the fluted columns falling into the sea, the great monoliths of death come the procession of the damned. First Demeter and her daughter Persephone, followed by the Black Knight carrying Dorotea��s lifeless body. The Deadman and animals turn to see this sad turn of events.


    Dorotea is placed down on the ground by the Black Knight. There is a whimpering coming from the Rabbit Ophelia, Octavian The Stallion lets out a mournful squeal. The Deadman takes Dorotea by the hand, tears of blood come down the sack covering his mummified face. Persephone, the daughter of Demeter puts her hand over Dorotea��s face. Looking into the sky she says ��This is beyond my power, or Astarte��s. I fear this may be hopeless.��

 Chapter 6. Once Dead but Alive Again

    Waking back in her world, Dorotea��s head hurts. Her lungs hurt, her leg feels broken. She rolls over and spits up a lung full of water. Hearing a commotion she starts to look around. She hears a strange mix of laughter and crying. She touches her face and can feel her left eye is puffed out so bad it throbs like a bucking bronco in her head. She feels her temple and under the swelling pieces of her eye socket feel like sand. Its such an awful feeling but she can��t stop messing with it.


    She is covered in mud and her ankle has a bad sprain. Beyond a low grassy knoll she spies the train wreak of the Barstowe European Circus. Clowns streaked with motor oil and blood sit around a fire. The Strongman from the Freak-show consoles the Fat Woman. Two hairy, Dog Faced Boys sit looking at the fire, weeping.


    A young girl named Ozma sees Dorotea and grabs her by the hand to present her to the survivors. Excitedly she says ��Look what I found!�� There are no smiles or welcomes. Tired eyes barely acknowledge her.


    Pulling Dorotea to a group of Smashed Train cars, the Young Girl asks. ��Do you want to see the Animals?�� Dorotea tries not to talk since a couple of her teeth feel chipped and every time she breathes feels a sensation of extreme cold in the nerve. Walking around they look in on a Bear, an Orangutan, several Peacocks and some kind of exotic cat, that Dorotea can��t tell if its a Lynx or a Snow Leopard. Finally a wounded Elephant and its Baby.


    Dorotea feels such a sad feeling for these animals she begins unlocking their cages. The Bear looks at her with a glassy daze, the Peacocks flock away in a violent dash of squawks, Orangutan turns its back to her, The Lynx or Leopard dashes off behind the Peacocks and the Baby Elephant does a bluff charge. Returns to his Mother Elephant who seems beyond help. A dying Jaguar drags himself into the reeds, back legs paralyzed from the crash. Crows circle overhead.


    The Young Girl asks ��How did you escape?�� Dorotea can��t remember a thing expect her Mother��s betrayal. The Young Girl says ��My Daddy said, we were ambushed by Mexican Revolutionaries, they bombed the bridge because the US Marines occupied the port of Veracruz. Pancho Villa is trying to inspire Mexicans into killing Americans on this side.�� Dorotea says ��My brothers left to ride with Pancho Villa.�� As soon as she said it she regretted it.


    Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.


    The Young Girl��s face turns hateful and with tears in her eyes runs off to tell someone what she said. Dorotea feels panic and tries to find a place to hide. She dashes into the Elephants Cage and dives behind the Mother Elephant. The Baby Elephant is enraged by this and begins to stamp his feet and turn around in aggressive displays, protecting his wounded Mother.


    Dorotea sees a group of Clowns and Rough Looking Carnies looking around with rifles and torches. Dorotea tries to pat the Baby Elephant on the head but he tries to bite her fingers. Finally she wrestles him down and tries to keep him quiet. This stirs the Mother to try to get up in the toppled Boxcar but she can��t, kicks several boards out of the roof of the box car on its side and stops moving. The Clowns move on.


    Dorotea hides under a pile of news paper thrown in as bedding for the Baby Elephant. A couple headlines include, ��Aleister Crowley��s Secret ��Invitation Only�� Performance of Igor Stravinsky��s ��Rites of Spring�� 1913 Causes Madness and Riots!��, ��Lusitania Attacked, America Considers Joining War in France.�� ��Mexican Raids on South Texas Continue, General Pershing Leads Punitive Expedition.�� ��US Institutes New Currency, Federal Reserve Act Passes by Small Margin. A Sorrowful Day for America.Warnings of Founding Fathers about Foreign Central Bankers Unyielded.��


    Hearing gunshots and seeing flames bursting from the horizon. Dorotea tries to get out of the broken slats in the roof of the train, but before she can the Baby Elephant charges and smashes the boards to bits, carrying both Dorotea and the Baby Elephant onto the ground in a heap. Hearing shouts of anger and feeling uncomfortable Dorotea dashes into the darkness. She hears rustling in the grass, sounds that send a chill down her spine.


    Seeing the Clowns and Carnies in a large battle with what must be Mexican Soldiers she thinks of her brothers. In a gunfight that seems like it occurs in show motion. One by one, each side knocks down a foe. Men falling, clasping their chests, gasping for air, murmuring prayers. Dorotea crawls further into the grass and comes face to face with a group of Glowing Eyes in the darkness. A Pride of Lions comes so close to Dorotea��s face she could kiss the nearest ones nose. There is a moment of shock in both sides and a large maned Male Lion licks her face and passes her to pursue the sounds of dying men behind her.


    Dorotea rolls onto a dirt road. Standing up she sees the scene behind her. The Carnival crash site has now turned into a scene of atrocity. Men trying to run are chased down and pummeled by Hungry Lions. Clowns covered in blood are beating dying Mexican Soldiers with Axes and Table Legs, Soldiers likewise are beating fallen Carnies with rifle butts, bayonetting the wounded. Everywhere there is violence and carnage. Dorotea feels her own battle is ahead. She begins walking in the direction of home, she will make her Mother pay for what she has done to Dorotea��s happy life.

 Chapter 7. Revolution of Three Sisters and the Fool

    Dorotea��s three sisters have been feeling restless for years. Since Ernesto and Julian left South to join the Mexican Revolution, they ached to go too, but their Mother was too harsh and there was some worry about what would happen to Dorotea if they left. So they waited. Biding their time until word came back their brothers were shot down by the same unit their eldest brother Xavier had joined, Pershing��s American Expeditionary force. This was too much to bare and something had to be done.


    After months of planning they got a truckload of explosives from their contacts in Pancho Villa��s force. Now there was a real chance to strike fear into the Americano Government, hopefully could be a spark to return Mexican lands seceded in the Mexican American war 70 years before.


    Their plan started with convincing their mentally challenged brother Roberto with flagging down a passing train with a torch. While distracted pushing stolen oxen cart full of TNT where the train had to cross into Mexico going west bound. For his trouble Roberto was shot in the guts, and instead of a troop transport or passenger train. What they managed to blow up was a Circus, unknowingly saving their baby Sister from a sad fate in a strange synchronicity. They were able to create some hysterics in Brownsville but the damage was minimal.


    This enraged the girls. Their great act of war against the gringos only succeeded in filling the countryside with dying Clowns, Wounded Animals and Hungry Lions. Which through a haze of tequila and hashish gave a certain anarchistic glee. But too late to turn back, Pancho��s ��Villaista�� cavalry crossed the border and began to wage war while they quietly crossed the other way to their Mexican homestead on the outskirts of Matamoros.


    They walked home with an uncertain mix of exhilaration and defeat, they came just into time to see their baby Sister chasing their Mother out the door of their home plunging a knife into her back and head. The girls just stood there with a look of confused mirth. Their Mother was always such a horrible bitch. Each one of them at one time felt the urge to kill their Mother who had took to selling them to passing laborers and Americanos since they first bled.


    Fantasizing about murder, and actually witnessing it are very different. People don��t die with some regal dignity. It is unpleasant, pleading, shrieking and lashing out in panic. Soiling their pants and letting out horrible smells from punctured lungs and intestines which is all the worse for alcoholics and chain smokers. Dorotea was not winning a certain battle, their mother was wielding a broken bottle. For every stab Dorotea landed, her Mother got in several slashes at Dorothea��s face and hands.


    By the time their Mother Reina collapsed and Dorotea was on top of her, now with a dull axe. Dismembering her mothers facial structure, not yet strong enough to cleave free the arms and head. She was just smashing in their Mothers sinuses and cheekbones into a gurgling mess of sharp white bones and unintelligible mess of pink meat and spurting blood.


    Seeing enough they grabbed Dorotea, who was in such fugue state of feral murder she just started hissing and scratching at them. Not seeing anything outside of her own little world. Finally one of the sisters had to brain her with an empty steel milk jug. The girls looked at each other in shock. Before they could compose them selves or say a word ��Roberto the Fool�� came stumbling over the burning horizon making sounds like a dying chimpanzee. As they all lock eyes a gunshot reduces Roberto��s face and head to a splatter of blood and bone chips as his skull ceases to exist.


    There is silence for a moment, before a sound like hundreds of horses rear forth from the darkness, turns out to be a half dozen comes battering down their corn field. US Cavalry come riding up like a tidal wave. The green clad Soldiers have bloodlust in their eyes. Their Commander says. ��Burn the farm, take everything of value and interrogate the women.�� The Soldiers drop their Rifles and walk up with their hands extended, ready to pounce.


    The girls don��t skip a beat, grabbing farm tools, a scythe, a pitchfork and a shovel. With out a word begin fighting for their lives. In short order even with bare hands the three Marines that aren��t knocked out and bleeding from cracked heads, have the girls on the ground and begin pawing at their dresses. Thats the moment when shots ring out. Xavi in his US Army uniform, shooting from one knee, executes his fellow US Soldiers with a bolt action rifle.


    The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    Xavi��s face is battered. He was taken prisoner for trying to plead for mercy to his own families farm. On the verge of being shot for insubordination, treason and giving aid to the enemy, he had managed to fight his way out of bondage. Now was firmly on his former units hit list. With no other option he had taken the Sombrero, Bandalero and Red Sash of the Villaista dead. Making him self now a Revolutionario. Where only 12 hours before he awoke to eat breakfast with his unit. Choices that will torment him the rest of his days.


    Now with the family reunited there was just silence. As they looked at Dorotea, Their Mother and Roberto lying apparently dead in a circle. Tears in their eyes as their childhood home burns and the sky north glows on fire with sounds of battle. The world of their childhood is now a hellish glow of red to feed the circling vultures.


    Sometime later the Sisters and Xavi watch Dorotea. Their mood gloomy, their deeds too dark to speak. They always were perceptive to each others feelings but now the silent procession moves with a sorrow that weighs heavy. Dragging Dorotea��s unconscious body behind a Baby Elephant that wouldn��t leave her side. They are moving West to join the Villaista Army.


    The sisters cooking a broth from a Zebra they found dead on the road. Taking turns to wash Dorotea��s forehead with cool water.Dorotea dreams in a dark place. Somewhere her spirit travels a dark dream world. Learning the secrets of Heaven and Earth.


    Perhaps it is Dorotea��s cosmic chastisement to live this day again and again in an out of body experience. Perhaps this is some dark poem by her Holy Guardian Angel to face the rashness of her actions. To take long and thoughtful glimpses at each moment, each tear drop and ray of light.


    Her Astral body is back on the road. Walking to her home. This time the sky is like a great Astrolabe, drawn with steady hands each twinkling star and passing heavenly body above the night sky looked as if painstakingly drawn by skilled hands by a great Architect. A symphony of crickets and end of day song birds have joined to serenade her journey to abandon. Seeing things she was too emotionally bogged down to recognize as unnatural. Great processions of Ethereal Spirits fill the sky. Shades of heros and villans of every kind consort with Angels and Demons riding Chariots, ancient Kings and Goddesses standing beside the road watching in knowing silence.


    Dorotea notices the Baby Elephant following behind her. She doesn��t know if its friend or foe so she stays ahead, any time she had slowed down to take a rock from her shoe or stumbling on her twisted ankle, the Baby Elephant turns around and flees in a cloud of dust. Only resuming its pace once she turns her back and is walking again. Coming to the farm its quiet, but smoke from the chimney shows someone is at home, likely her Mother. Dorotea stops at the shed where they butcher lambs and goats. Retrieving a large knife and a lantern.


    Startled she hears a bell behind her from Navajo Jacob. He strokes her hand with his nose. She halfheartedly pets him. Looking up in the lantern light, all the eyes of the animals stare at her unblinking. She almost wants to just go inside and forget everything that has happened. She can��t let it go. What her Mother did was too evil. As she turns to continue her mission, their pet Ram Navajo Jacob bites the sleeve of her dress. Pulling her back, trying to dissuade her from bloodshed. She roughly pushes him away and turns towards the house. Dorotea climbs in the window of the bed bedroom she shares with her sisters. She can hear her Mother singing to her self in the kitchen. Peering through the door Dorotea sees her Mother Reina laying out a spread of Spanish Loteria cards made from the famous 1913 Edmund Sullivan illustrations of Omar Khayy��m��s Rub��iy��t.


    Surrounding her unfeeling Mother... the goods her body was traded for, booze, cigars and foreign delicacies like canned pineapple, caviar and Palestinian olives. Exuding a self satisfied joy, filling Dorotea with hate. She feels such contempt for the fat body, the rolls of her neck, her stubby legs, hairy chin and the comical red dress her Mother must have thought was seductive to drunken migrants. Her Mother sits at the table, pours her self a glass of Tequila but doesn��t drink it.


    Dorotea has crept up behind her and just then her Mother stands up turning and face to face. They both share a feeling a shock, shame and discomfort. Before Dorotea can say a word her Mother looking down at the knife, lets out a cry of rage and darts forward clawing at Dorotea��s eyes. Dropping the knife there is silence for a second as realization comes to Dorotea, her Mother has been waiting for an excuse to kill her for her whole life. Muttering some curse too low to hear, her Mother grabs Dorotea by the hair, slamming her head into the beams holding up the roof, into a glass cabinet full of dinner ware and into a shelf of canned goods that collapses on top of them.


    Dorotea reaches out for the knife and before a plan can even take shape plunges it deep into her Mother��s gut. Letting out a yelp, her Mother hops up off her chest recoiling towards the front door yelling. ��Disgraciada!�� ��Bruja!�� ��Demonia!�� While grabbing a Lantern, waving it around to keep Dorotea at bay. Climbing to her feet the agony of betrayal is too much for Dorotea. She screams a feral war cry and dashes up to her Mother plunging her knife into her Mother��s neck and hands blocking her pig face.


    Her Mother throws the lantern at Dorotea��s feet, who hops over the torrent of flame. The Mother now panics struggles out side as Dorotea plunges the knife into her back over and over until the knife breaks cutting her fingers deep. Finding the axe she leaned against the front door before she snuck in. Something deep in her heart decides its time to kill her wicked witch mother once and for all. Cut off her arms and legs like a medieval Knight would do to a traitor who has wronged the people so deeply an example must be made.

 Chapter 8. Beware the Lion Faced Angel Ahriman Zurvan

    Dorothea��s funeral procession is humble by royal standards. A couple deposed Goddesses, a Deadman who doesn��t know his own name, and a hanged Knight who keeps a stoic watch, too overwhelmed with a new found life to add any bits of wisdom. The animals show the most overt pain at the loss. Octavian the Stallion and Ophelia the Giant Rabbit the size of a Bear have tears in their downcast eyes.


    Nearing a great valley full of Broken Temples. The procession stops. On the road a Small Boy with dark sleepless eyes glowers at them. He drags a sword too heavy for him to lift, and a great Lions Mane falls from his shoulders like a mockery of a Kings Cape. The Deadman and the Black Knight step forward. The Black Knight says ��Who blocks our way to the Temple of Ashtoreth?�� The Deadman stands silently.


    The Boy growls, ��The one called Mithras, answers to no peasant or whores claiming to be Goddesses.�� Persephone draws a glass sword and before she can charge forth and eviscerate this small Mad Child, is stopped by her Mother. Smiling Demeter speaks, ��Are you full of so much hate you would halt a funeral procession seeking to bless the breath of life into a fallen comrade?�� The Boy Mithras stares silently with a smile of such hostility words are futile. The Knight steps forward, drawing a Sword of Obsidian to meet the challenge.


    Mithras takes a stone tablet from his cloak. Raising it above his head, the sky darkens, he smashes it over his knee and the black clouds spill thunderbolts. Cracking across the sky, making all who witness pause to ponder this. The boy Mithras is lost in a swirl of black sand, magma and violent electricity. Where once was an Angry Child is now a mighty Angel of Wrath, a Creature made of hostility given life. The form of a fierce Angel body, with the head of a ferocious Lion, wrapped in a golden serpent. Wings of a Bright Plumage, with head and body devoid of color like marble save for golden eyes and teeth that give off an intense heat, brandishing a Silver Mace of Lightning and a Golden Sword of Fire. The Leontocephaline form of Ahriman Zurvan.


    Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    In response to this Demeter and Persephone vanish into rays of light streaking into the Heavens. Deftly the Deadman rolls out of the way as the mad child Mithras in his mythic form, Ahriman comes smashing forward. The Black Knight is too slow to react, throwing him head over heals several dozen feet. At the same time Deadman has unleashed a volley of arrows, glancing off Ahriman��s marble skin with out penetration. Now this violence had alarmed Octavian who comes running full speed to batter Ahriman with his hooves, and the same time Ophelia rushes in like a Wildcat with outstretched claws, this also does very little to deter Mithras in the mighty form of Ahriman.


    Without any trouble Mithras, in his manifestation of Ahriman, the Angel of Wrath dashes aside Octavian and Ophelia. The Deadman continues to pummel arrows into Ahriman. It was at this moment that a mighty female voice cracks across the Heavens, ��Who dares defile this funerary rite? Who dares come into my valley with belligerence? Who dares assault my Heralds on this day?��


    In a flash Mithras, now just a boy again, kneeling in respect as Artemis manifests in a Pillar of Fire. Standing before him, her eyes are full of vengeance. She stops and smiles, ��Who is this foolish child before me?�� He stands and states, ��Mithras.�� She responds, ��Ah yes, my old friend Mithras. I haven��t heard your name in centuries. Have you lost your wealth and dominions? Where is your cult?�� Again feeling hostile, ��I do not explain myself, I have come to visit ��The Queen of Heaven��s�� Temple.��


    She turns to the others in the group and says ��Well then you are welcome, but any more violence this day and you will be banished for eternity to a place of my choosing.�� To the others she says ��Any wounds?�� The Deadman looks down at his broken open rib cage, exposing straw, oats, wheat and dust. He says ��Ive survived worse.�� Artemis says, ��Yes I remember when we executed you for crimes against our Temples and Priestesses.�� The Deadman lowers his Ruby eyes and does not respond.


    Looking beyond him, Artemis sees the Black Knight has fallen apart. An empty suit of Armor housing scattered bones. She gathers the pieces of armor and bones making a pile on the cart of Ophelia The Rabbit who she pets fondly and says to no one in particular. ��Rabbits are close to my heart as they are beloved by Ashtoreth and find water and offerings at our temples.�� Ophelia sits up, happy for the praise and attention.

 Chapter 9. Hermes Redemption in the Temple of Ashtoreth

    Approaching the great Temple complex the procession stops at a great staircase. Priestesses come and unhook the animals from their carts of riches and bones, taking them to a more gradual path up the hill curving off through a stone gate to fields of gold grain and orchards of endless bounty.


    Entering the temple the Deadman shakes in fear, this is the heart of his greatest enemies inner sanctum. He marvels at the mighty marble columns, rising 30 meters to a ceiling of gold leaf, perfumed cedar beams and gleaming bronze plates illuminated by thousands of candles.


    It reminded him of his old life, scented oil on the priestesses, incense and fine offerings of food. He remembers his own Great Temple that once stood in the great city, burned down twice and never rebuilt. He remembers the thousands of alters he put to the sword as well, trying to wipe out all the old cultures sacred spaces.


    In another life he would had broken these pillars with machines of war, siege towers, catapults and put all the adherents to the sword, taken the artisans and priestesses as slaves to sacrifice on Solomon��s great tabernacle, pouring gouts of blood on the Arc of the Covenant, burning the bodies to the Heavens.


    As if provoked by these profane thoughts the great female warriors of Artemis seize him suddenly. Breaking his legs and putting him in irons. The High Priestess of Ashtoreth, Hypatia. Coming down from behind the statue of Ashtoreth says, ��I thought we had been rid of you once and for all, Hermes Trismegistus.�� The Deadman is confused, are they addressing him?


    The High Priestess continues, ��A great enemy has been brought to us today. We shall feast and burn your bones to dust as you have done to thousands of our people.��


    Stepping forward, Demeter says, ��We have more pressing matters than him. A mortal soul that died bringing Ashtoreth��s hero Mercury The Black Knight, home. He lies before us. I have come to ask the Goddess to restore her to life.��


    The High Priestess says, ��We regretfully must decline. The power of Ashtoreth is diminished as her temples have fallen, our sacred groves burned. The spark of life cannot be pulled down from the Firmament with out something pulled from a being willing to give up its ghost in return. We also have our own fallen to return from the Spirit.��


    Demeter smiles and says, ��I have been considering this. Since this soul aided my journey to the underworld to rescue my daughter, that I could not have entered with out the company of a soul willing to risk death. I offer my own spirit to raise this mortal soul from the sleep of death.��


    Persephone cries out,pleading. ��No Mother, you cannot! You have existed from the birth of the Universe! You cannot trade eternal life for the wink of life in a mortal who will return to the earth after a mere century at most!�� Demeter says, ��I give up nothing, it is the honor and duty I hold to give this soul the chance to grow to womanhood, live a full life and become a wise follower of our dying cult.��


    Hypatia, the High Priestess of Ashtoreth responds, ��It is out of the question. Until we find a worthy soul to sacrifice their life to restore Mercury, we must focus on our own duty. And preserve these sacred precincts for the proliferation of Ashtoreth��s glory and preservation of teachings at the verge of obliteration.��


    Demeter rising with eyes of fire strikes the High Priestess silent, instantly turned to crystal, encased in quartz. Demeter and Persephone embrace. Artemis comes in the Eastern portal framed by a great Rising star on the Horizon with Ophelia and Octavian just in time to see Demeter cry out hallowed words in a forgotten language and fall on her sword, plunging it into her upper belly under her ribs. Dorotea startled, opens her eyes. The High Priestess shatters free from the purple chrysalis preventing her from intervening.


    A somber tone abounds the death of a Mother Goddess who watched the world form in her youth. Demeter, the old Goddess of easy childbirth, harvest, abundance. Restoring the health of dying infants and watching children in times of peril over deep and rushing waters now lies face down on the stone floor. Millenia of stories and a wealth of knowledge lost to history just as the suns last rays sweep through the Western Portal.


    If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.


    Artemis, with eyes of jagged rage seizes The Deadman screaming, ��A light has gone out in the world forever, and yet you still live. You craven swine. Burner of the innocent, ��Hangman of the imposter god of Zion,�� ��Witchhunter rapist of our sisters��, killer of our mothers. Why should you continue to exist while our most holy and righteous die in your place? Your only use to this world is to spill your spark of life into The Black Knight Mercury. ��Hermes the Coward.�� You can��t even remember your crimes. Now you die for the resurgence of the Goddess cult.��


    The Deadman doesn��t defend him self. There is no defense for slaughtering the innocent, breaking jaws of Holy Men, smiting pregnant stomachs of mothers, throwing children to wild beasts and smashing monuments into dust. He just wishes he could remember. These are all accusations leveled against a man with no memory, no soul and a body held together by rags and thread. It would indeed be a wise trade to die so that a Goddess such as Demeter, or a God such as Mercury could be reborn.


    A sound of great stone dragging over stone fills the temple. The central temple effigy of Ashtoreth steps forward, a free flowing dress made of heavy Marble gives her a gravity like a mountain that walks. Her booming voice at the head of the temple speaks. ��Am I to have no say in my own house?��


    All the mortal Priestesses fall their knees. ��I have an alternate offer. The dead and resurrected Hermes has no memory of his old lives, any of them. Before he was a tool of the evil Wizard Solomon, he was one of us. A noble and wise guider of spirits to the other side of eternity. He was killed and risen so many times, he is but a shade of his former self. A shadow in the netherworld. Now he is before us, not for judgement, but to be freed of the evil incantations that enslaved him and so many others to build the temple of horror in Jerusalem. The hordes of Zion, Devil God of the corrupt, seeker of vengeance and blood. His evil priests even now to seek slaughter this world in a sea of fire and misled hate. We do not require sacrifice like the puny gods of stone age death cults. We bring forth the spring sun and rain from the depths of winter. We bring healthy children forth from lands plagued by death and despair. These noble animals hold the key to restoring life. Will you living creatures sacrifice your selves to this mission?��


    Dorotea now cries out. ��No, you cannot ask that of these innocent animals. They have no voice to give their consent. They have no understanding of language to speak their fears and discontent.�� Ashtoreth smiles, ��Very wise indeed, young one. I can see why Demeter felt so strongly about you taking her mantle in the world of men. I have a solution, so that these beings can speak.��


    Looking to Octavian and Ophelia, ��Do you understand all that has been said?�� Both answer in strange voices. Octavian speaks, ��I will sacrifice my life, so that your hero Mercury can be reborn.�� Dorotea dashes to him grasping his neck and kissing his face crying. ��No.�� in an anguished moan over and over. Ashtoreth smiles at Ophelia, ��Do you also believe in this quest?�� Ophelia speaks, ��Although i do not want to die. I will abide to bring back the Goddess Demeter.��


    Ashtoreth smiles, marble of her face cracking under pressure revealing a white aura beyond the stone within her Effigy. ��No Ophelia, you will not die. I will bond your spirit to Demeter so if ever you are in fear or peril she will be with you.�� Dorotea can only manage a sorrowful half smile.


    Drawing a sword Artemis walks over to the noble beast Octavian. ��Are you sure, o wise one? You would suffer death so that this immortal can rise again?�� He is silent but steadfast. Artemis cradles the head of Dorotea and they both stroke the mane of Octavian, the most brave of all war horses. Artemis says, ��Do you want to wield the killing blow?�� Dorotea shakes her head. ��I would rather sacrifice myself than see any harm to either of them.�� Looking deep into Octavian��s eyes, Artemis pushes Dorotea back. Artemis retreats to the end of the temple where the Bones and Armor of Mercury The Black Knight lies at her feet and states. ��If it is your wish to die Octavian, come and receive the the killing blow.��


    Octavian races forward from the opposite side of the temple and Artemis recoils the sword back into a defensive stance, point rearing towards Octavian��s breast bone as he rushes forward seemingly ready to trample her. Sword plunging deep into the space between his lower neck and front legs, directly into his heart. In an instant he is gone. Transformed into flakes of gold leaf floating in the air. Wisps of gold waft down onto all present. Suddenly the Deadman Hermes cries out, ��Wait!�� In the moment of Octavian��s death all the knowledge of his life comes back. He knows the spirit rising from the Armor of The Black Knight is not is not Mercury, but that of the Giant King, behind the door he was nailed to. He remembers it was he who slew Solomon the Satanist, and he was killed by his own armies for it.


    Evil Laughter fills the Temple. A reddish glow from within the Black Armor of Mercury glows. The profane wizard, the Dead-Giant King, Sorsos in the red cloak is born into the world again. The manifestation of horror and atrocity. The Evil Wizard who wrote incantations to call forth demons on this world, who filled great burning pits with the children of Canaan. The father of all that is corrupt and dishonest, now in the form of a great warrior.


    The Deadman is reduced to ash. Behind a great plume of smoke rises Hermes, Wise and Benevolent Angel of Death. Hermes is clad in radiant gold and jewel encrusted armor. His skull face sparkling white, metallic gold wings stretch from his shoulders. A purity and white light shines from his healing aura.


    As the glowing cracks in the Black Knight��s armor spew molten drops of steel on the floor of the temple, Mithras the mad child who slunk silently among the worshippers of Ashtoreth��s temple now begins stabbing women in the Temple, dashing down braziers into an inferno of fire.


    Solomon, in the Armor of the Black Knight begins his own attack, smashing down pillars and carving through the faithful. In seconds it is over. Solomon and Mithras have fled into the Ether. In their wake Artemis and Dorotea both collapsed in the sneak attack. Persephone, out of breath and wiping blood from her brow looks defeated at the dead and dying priestesses of Ashtoreth, the Goddess statue broken in half, partially shattered after falling halfway down the stairs.


    Hermes, now a great winged Skeletal figure of radiant light bares witness to the destruction, tears of blood run down his skull while he holds the rubies given to him when he was a frail corpse by Dorotea.

 Chapter 10. Pancho Villa and the Great Northern Army

    The three Sisters of Dorotea gather mushrooms at the base of trees, near mossy rocks, and edible berries from a hillside of flowers. They are deep in the state of Nuevo Leon, trying to find the stronghold where Pancho Villa is entrenched. Xavier was busying hunting food when his US Army, uniform got the attention of Soldadera snipers, women from the country side who took up the Revolutionary flag.


    It was by a coincidence of a Bee Sting on the female marksman��s thighs. The same moment a dust devil appeared at his feet, made Xavier stumble on loose rocks that saved his life. Just as the shot rings out, he loses his footing and tumbles 70 feet into a dry ravine. The enraged Soldadera was too busy swatting off an angry Bee to take his head off. As she regains composure Xavi has vanished. Giving chase the Soldadera runs right into his trap. Eating an apple Xavier steps from behind a large oak tree to address his pursuer.


    ��Per miso Usted. Detente y suelta tu arma. Por favor.�� She scowls and says, ��I speak English, Gringo dog.�� He laughs, ��I am no Gringo, I am from Matamoros. I was conscripted into the Americano Army by General Pershing while trading goods one day in Texas 3 months ago.�� She does not lower her weapon. She says, ��I am Maritza Osiorio, I command this territory for the Northern Revolutionary Army of General Pancho Villa!��


    He smiles and says, ��My brothers fought for Pancho Villa, as soon as I could escape i went home to find my family farm burning. My sisters and I came to join the Villaista forces in Chihuahua.�� She raises her eyebrow amused, ��What were your brothers names?�� He says, ��Ernesto and Julian.�� She relies, ��Im sorry to tell you they were shot down, a week ago in Veracruz when Pershing ��Hijo de Puta Madre�� occupied the port. You were likely there fighting where they died. They were polite boys, we will miss their guitar and songs. If you want to find the Villaista camp in Zacatecas, I will take you, but you could be a spy so i must take your rifle and tie your hands.�� Still smiling, ��As you wish, but who will carry the deer I just shot over the rise?��


    After collecting the sisters and Dorotea, still unconscious, they come to a series of dry washes. A maze of dark creases in eroded sand stone. An ancient stronghold, used long before the Revolution as a sanctuary for Indios fleeing the Spanish, and later for Rebels against the French and Americanos. Deep in the heart of this place is a secluded spring where trees and fertile crops surround an island in the middle of a river that has no name.


    Pancho Villa��s Northern Army hides in place full of trees long cultivated from the first Europeans brought seeds, stolen by a Mescalero raid long before the end of the Aztec empire. Everywhere Apples, Avocados, Cherries, Peaches and Citrus trees line the banks of the river. Hundreds of caves with watching gunman loyal to Pancho Villa look down on the new arrivals. Given food and drink the sisters and Xavier are put under guard. Dorotea is brought to their medicine woman.


    This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work.


    Dorotea wakes in a cool cavern. Light plays off the ceiling. Confused she wonders which world she has awakened into. Having been torn back and forth from one reality to another, she feels as if all the anguish and struggle of her journeys could have been a dream. But what is this place? In all her life she has never been in a underground pool. As much as she has slept, she still feels so tired.


    She closes her eyes but hears the shuffling of bare feet. Healers come to offer her broth to drink and a plate of fruit. She drinks water and its coolness makes her feel truly alive again. Seeing a beautiful woman sitting nearby she feels familiar. Thinking back to the day she was kidnapped by H.T. Barstowe, she remembers this was the kind Medium who watched over her. This woman was the mother of the girl she met, the unwilling bride of Barstowe. Dorotea tries to speak but her voice croaks from a dry throat. The Medium speaks, ��Don��t talk yet. Rest until you are well. Drink this tea and sleep.��


    Now at night the Villa camp is alive with smells of food and drink.Like a king, Pancho and his Generals preside over a rowdy group of Rebels, Bandits, Horse Thieves and Mercenaries willing to hide out with this bunch to avoid their own date with the hangman. Xavier and his sisters are seated at a table, hands tied behind their backs. Trying to laugh and nod in agreement to wild stories of great battles and feats of daring.


    ��El General Caballero�� Pancho loves to hear stories of his own deeds. Red in the face from howling in laughter he listens to one of his Generals detailing how Pancho met with the leader of the Constitutional forces, Huerta. In a brawl amongst the dry intellectual brass of the provisional Government. Pancho started a riot by slapping the stoic Huerta across the face. Nearly dying after being sentenced to death. Escaping the Hangman��s noose only after his Generals rode into town and fought back Huerta��s forces. At this point Pancho lowers his collar to show a deep red mark of a Hangman��s rope around his neck. Shooting their way out and turning one time allies to enemies. More roaring with laughter and spilled drinks.


    The topic of the US invasion comes up and the ��Soldadera�� sniper Maritza interjects. ��We have a Gringo from Pershing��s Expedition.�� Pancho��s eyes turn harsh, his face curls into a snarl. Now sitting silently with a glare of hate, he waits for more information. Xavier speaks up, ��No Se?or, I was a captive of the Americano��s. They burned my home and I brought my sisters who blew up the train in Brownsville, my younger brothers Ernesto and Julian rode with you.��


    A smile crosses Don Pancho��s face, ��Set them free. We now have more Compa?eros for the fight ahead. Any one who has lost brothers to the Revolution is welcome at my table.��


    Villa is showered with gifts by the locals. A series of large cages are dragged by horse cart with several Lions. Villa is ecstatic, ��Yes. Bien, bien. We will feed them well, the ��Pinche Gringo�� President Wilson and General Pershing��s head will be first on the menu!�� More exotic smaller cages with Birds and Monkeys are presented. Pancho frees them, 2 Peacocks and a Howler Monkey promptly jump on his table to pick at the feast. Pancho is laughing so hard now, he grabs his heart and sits heavily down.


    Now focused on the sisters. He says, ��Now, who are these lovely creatures?�� Xavier stands and says, ��General Villa, allow me to introduce my sisters Carolota Isabel, Carmen Concepcion, Rosa Maria���� Pancho is quick to kiss their hands and whisper jokes in their ears. The girls thrive on the attention of Pancho and his Officers. Pancho sweeps his arms in a regal fashion, ��Allow me to introduce our honored guests, General Emiliano Zapata of the Southern Revolutionary Cavalry and our American friend and compatriot Mr. Ambrose Bierce, American Civil War Veteran and writer of wide renowned.�� The girls are impressed.

 Chapter 11. In a dream my Love, you will find my heart.

    Dorotea is reliving the day of the Circus. She was alone, just before dusk. She knew trouble was lurking and going home was not and option. She thought about explaining every thing the Nann Moran, the grandmother who ran the farm, but asking for help was never something she could bring herself to do. She had all her keepsakes, dollars, gold and jewelry she acquired working. She could see H.T. Barstowe��s motor carriage driving back and forth at the front of the farm.


    She decided to go the other way. Into the fields of maize, at the edge of the farm was a dumping ground for old stoves. She ducked bellow the rusted metal and barbed wire. Seeing a large tanker from a long scrapped train she rushes to find a way in. Pushing open a hatch on a steam boiler left to deteriorate in the dump. Inside was dusty and dry. She decided to hide, but it was so dark. She left the hatch partially open to catch rays of the setting run. After a while the sky became a deep purple sparkled with stars. She felt so hopeless. Betrayed by her Mother. She thought maybe her sisters could help her but they were so self indulgent, they would never miss a night of drinking to help her.


    As she tried think clearly tears and despair stopped any clear thoughts. She thought of places she could go. New York City had no direct trains, California is a straight shot on one line but she felt like the ��Wild West�� was just as scary as the Circus. She thought of Texas big cities like Houston, Galveston, San Antonio, Amarillo. Everything seemed so foreign. Like trying to survive in Alaska alone. She knew she would need food and a place to live but she also felt like any one who notices her could take her away to a fate worse than the Circus. She can hear the train in the distance, but closer she can hear dogs, the Barstowe hunting dogs!


    She tries to close the hatch but its bent and opens back with a screeching sound of rusted hinges. She hears men��s voices, banging on metal drums, clattering chains, and heavy footsteps. The dogs scrambling around ahead of the men. At the hatch sniffing and the muzzle of a giant black hound, when it barks its like thunder inside the the boiler. She feels around for something like a wrench or piece of metal to brain this dog who is trying to open the heavy metal hatch and scramble inside to bite her.


    Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.


    Dorotea feels a nasty flake of rusted iron jam under her fingernail. She sucks the wound but there is no time, searching again she puts her hand on something strange that is moving and before she can recoil, it stings her. A large black scorpion crawls onto her bare leg bellow her skirt. Panicking she swats at it, when suddenly the hatch is opened by an angry Clown with a lantern. All is lost. At least she thinks the scorpion venom will kill her before they can drag her back to the Circus for some unknown life of drudgery and abuse. Dragged out she sees the evil smile of H.T. Barstowe then the world goes black.


    Waking she is in a Gypsy Wagon. Burgundy curtains, Indian blankets, lamps of glass beads and a stained glass skylight are all so mesmerizing to her, she forgets to be afraid. She looks around an sees dozens of victorian lithographs in lockets and ornate frames of silver and gold rococo floral motifs. She is startled by a voice behind her head, ��Those were traded by gamblers with no money, who bring their family heirlooms to trade for one more hand of cards. I get first pick before the Carnies.��


    Turning around to see she is on a loft apartment, bellow there is a table covered in fine candelabras, pearls, glass roses and crystal glasses. Esma, the gypsy is the Circus fortune teller. She reads Tarot cards, she asks ��Would you like me to read your horoscope in the cards?�� Dorotea climbs down and sits across from her. ��When is your birthday?�� Dorotea says, ��June 21st.�� The Gypsy Woman relies, ��Ah, a Gemini, almost born on the Solstice. I bet you hold many secrets.��


    Esma, the gypsy woman shuffles her Tarot deck, placing an ominous spread. Cards with Fiery Angels, Devils, A Burning Tower, The Figure of Death, Executions and Torture lay before her. Before the Gypsy Medium can speak banging at the door, it��s seized open by hostile Clowns.


    Kicking the cards from the table Dorotea focuses on cards that feel familiar from her dreams A Hanged Man, A Man Impaled by 10 swords, A Hermit all staged from corpses in post mortem lithographs taken my the Lion Tamer. Dorotea is dragged out into the night. The Medium looks at a post mortem photograph of her Daughter, tears fall.

 Chapter 12. The Aria of Aries

    Chanting in the streets echoes far among the spires of the capital city. ��Oh Yahova, forgive us for being born, look kindly on our homes. Send not vengeful Angels into the night, to harvest our women and children. Take our offerings of blood and ask not what we cannot give.�� A mournful mantra repeated endlessly since the ��Night of the Lamb��s Blood.�� They yearn for mercy and solace but have earned only cruelty and fear. Graven ��Star of the Remphan�� motifs adorn the Temples and bloody doors of domiciles.


    Yahova isn��t here, and never was. The imposter god Aries or his whispered title Baal ��Seahrah Shahor Shamen�� Remphan, sits at the top of his great pyramid in his penthouse writing curses on pieces of paper that he lets fall to the ground. His nude Slaves wait in silence. His great rooms are dark, long corridors of billowing scarlet curtains keep out the light, far off at the end of the room an open wall looks down on the barren city racked by the plague. His many names cause division and deceit in the world. Few know his true form.


    Aries kicks his chair back and rises, making his Slave Girls shudder from the sudden violence of his movements. Aries walks to a great mirror of polished metal that deforms his image. He enjoys the corrupted image of his Ram visage in shined Bronze .


    The great god Aries washes his hands in a pool of blood and wrings them clean on towel held up by an Egyptian slave. Walking to the balcony he looks down on the scattering of bodies left to rot on the streets bellow, seeing pools of blood from the latest purge of newborns. Ethnic cleansing of the children of Canaan.


    Speaking an incantation that darkens the sky and washes the streets clean of blood. In the distance the Great Temple of Baal, grounds of cremation lights the edges of this city called Dis. Looking down on shrieking Mothers whose babies are torn from their arms, being speared and kicked down the stairs of his pyramid. He says, ��Damn them, damn them all. Parasites growing in the bellies of whores.��


    This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.


    Aries wishes he could drop the Sun onto the Earth and incinerate all the dissenting opinions, the rival cultures, the masses ruled by fear of political Jackals. Soon there will be a final war to cleanse the non believers, to rid the world of the filth cults of false monotheism, of democracy and human rights. Then there will be only one law, the Adept��s law of wealth and of subjugation of the the powerless and uneducated. This is his creed of Zion.


    With a crack in the Heavens, Mithras and Mercury fall from the sky like the morning star. Mercury possessed by the demonic high priest King Sorsos has arrived to finalize their plans. Now Solomon the Sorcerer has taken the body of Mercury, there can be a showdown. He wonders where is Mars, the great enemy?


    Smiling as he looks back into his dinning chambers where Mars corpse lies ripped open and eviscerated. A game called ��Death and Resurrection.�� This war has long been over, the victor indulging nightly in the vivisection and resurrection of the supposed enemy who was always a shill, a straw man used to justify the purges, the torture, the mutation of accused supporters the the pitiful god Mars who has long been the puppet of Aries. There is no dissent when you control the opposition and send them to bark like dogs when it is useful and send them scurrying like roaches when it is not.


    Aries gloats over how much confusion he has wrought on the world. Secretly turning Persephone into his lover in the underworld, manipulating her into a manifestation of poison and suffering. She has long been his captive in the underworld. Few suspect he has altered her. Turning her, shaping her rage at her mother Demeter for not protecting her. Melding her manifestation Hecate who in darkness serves the taker of infants Lamashtu, to his cause and her herald Hermes into an executioner. Turning Mercury into an assassin. Turning wise King Solomon��s ghost into the poltergeist of horror Sorsos and the Fisher King��s mother to his agenda. Taking Mars as his thrall. The Epoch of Aquarius will begin in his grasp. Soon he will trample the Goddesses once and for all. Leaving them to be breeding whores for his army of Monsters. No pagan alter or book of learning will exist when his fires sweep into the lands so far untouched.

 Chapter 13. The Angel of Death

    Away from the Revolution and Strife of Northern Mexico, Dorotea is back with her companions. The Deadman, now reborn as his true form of Golden Angel Hermes, he soars above Persephone, Artemis and Ophelia the Rabbit. Dorotea comes to her senses on the cart pulled by Ophelia. She sits up, confused at the new environment. She sees they are in a wasteland, an arid desert with low stone huts that are abandoned.


    Obscuring the nightsky above, a swirling mass of shriveled monstrosities. Charnel howls from carion feeders, Ravens and Vultures. They pass corpses black with bloated faces, red eyes budge out of blue sockets, yellow teeth exposed, tongues swollen. Artemis says, ��Cover your mouth, this is the plague.�� As they progress farther into the land of Zion they see great cities on mountain tops burning. Processions of fleeing populace pour out in all directions.


    Dorotea thinks of Bible stories of the Holy Land. This place seems the same on the surface, but more sad and desperate, chewed up by war and famine. She thinks of the Book of Revelation, where a great Beast unfurls disease upon the World, Angels with Trumpets pour Wrath Upon the World. In the Distance, she thinks she can see Angels with Trumpets watching from a cliff in the Eastern Sky. They come to the Western shore of sea of Galilee, Fishermen tumult on great waves.


    Dorotea asks Persephone, ��What happened to this world, why is everything inverted and out of harmony?�� Persephone says, ��A wrong was committed and soon will be righted again.��


    Dorotea thinks of etchings she saw of the New Testament by Gustave Dor��. This grey landscape fits with those illustrations, especially when rays of solitary light shine down amongst angry clouds. A little spot of hope among rain and thunder. It can��t be all dismay and belligerence, there must be some virtue and wisdom out there somewhere.


    They come to the foot of the hill they view the 7 hills of Jerusalem, chief among them of the Temple Mount of Zion. It has an ominous aura. The black walls from years of sacrificial blood thrown over them reek of rot, dotted with hundreds of heads of False Prophets and many Ancient Ones who first ruled this city, gained the Ire of the Temple Priest ��Sanhedrin��, who wage a reign of terror on any interpretation that conflicts theirs.


    Many ruins litter the foothills, punctuated by Castrated Kings and Royal families nailed upside-down giant X shaped cruciforms, many charred corpses tied with wire to burning palm trees give off an acrid stench. Women who tore open their own wombs wander outside the city screaming for God to strike them down. These are casualties of dozens of wars over the centuries, who return to life and spread eternity wailing at the sky for injustices going back to the dawn of time.


    If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.


    Hermes remembers his time as The Deadman, despite the discomfort of living death, he also felt a lightness of being. Untarnished by the knowledge of an eternity of mistakes. He wonders if this is really all there is in the after light, or if this is just a stage he has been damned to repeat forever for his own mistakes. Or if his existence is supposed to give hope to the damned and his cross to carry is trying to seem pleasant when he feels his bones rubbing together and torment in his own spirit.


    Entering the city of Jerusalem they find more torment within. School girls gather in the square of the Temple courtyard to mutilate their breasts, carving off everything that makes them women. Radical Zionists take running starts to dash their own brains against the wailing wall after stomping offerings of infants at the foot of the wall, each with a papyrus prayer in their teeth.


    Hawkish soldiers walk around blinded by their own hands, seizing random passers by to be scourged or hacked apart by swords. The Sadducees and Pharisees watch from leaning towers, occasionally throwing half eaten food to starving toddlers and wild dogs in the dry springs that once ran under the city.


    The inhabitants suffer torments of disease, a living death with rampant Leprosy, Syphilis and Gangrene from Fungus that grows up from under the streets onto trees and walls, turning every surface yellowed green, blue and black, out of gutters where skinless sheep and discarded children rot in open sewers. This is a city of madness and cruelty with no meaning, just perversity for perversities sake.


    They come to a blinded Wiseman, who is impaled on a stake. He says, ��Water! Please give me water!�� The head of the procession Dorotea says sadly, ��We have no water. I am sorry. How did you come to have a stake run in your loins and out your Skull?�� Wind blows his threadbare rags, his hands and feet blue from lack of circulation and infection around nails that support all his weight.


    The Wiseman looks to the heavens and shrieks, ��I came to deliver the sleepless and tired to rest. I brought food and sweet water to the needy, they took them and laughed at me. Soldiers arrested me and accused me of being a Philistine. The butchers of Zion left me half alive in their incompetence. If you would, I ask that you free me from this life, take your sword and put me out of this misery.��


    Dorotea remembers the sword, the scarlet cloak and the horned helmet she was gifted her first day in this world. With assuring looks of her companions, she takes the Impaled man by the hand. Kissing it and with a mighty scream delivers a killing blow to the mans heart. The Impaled man falls limp, now at rest. Now they climb to the highest precinct of the city to hold court with The Fisher King.

 Chapter 14. The Absentee King and The Vile Harlot

    Coming to the crest of a hill, they are at the foot of a Great Temple. The doors are open and prostitutes walk freely among statues of Archangels and Saints. As they walk between vestibules, once Holy but now hanged with curtains to hide the daily trade of the Women and Children who live here. In room after room the once grand temple is now in squalor. Statues lie smashed, great fountains used as toilets and everywhere Pharisees stalk the corridors looking for victims to bleed for their own profane alters. Madness scratches the minds of the chosen and unchosen alike. A crawling and burning urge to squeeze the life out of themselves and others for an absentee God who is represented by liars, swindlers and the most depraved of the religious scum stalking this world.


    Wailing Drunks left bloody and broken lie at the feet of Cutthroats who gather at the grand doors to the inner sanctum. Trying to enter the sanctuary, they are accosted by Ruffians who are dressed as Angels in golden armor, with clubs and spears. One of the Criminals tries to drag Dorotea off into the shadows and this starts a great butchery between the companions of Dorotea and the Cutthroats.


    Hermes smashes faces open with a Mace of Light. Artemis slaughters these Madmen with arrows. Ophelia mauls attackers like a starving Tiger, leaving arms and legs in puddles of scarlet. Dorotea herself hacks her attackers into pieces, splattering her face into bloody warpaint. There is silence for moments before a great roar comes from the eves. Pharisees and their armored ��Sicari�� Thugs come running towards the companions.


    An eternity goes by with clanging of swords on metal helmets, spears tossed into heads shatter skulls. Arrows penetrate eyes, swords cleave off hands. Exposed bones and steaming organs bloom forth from open wounds. Pink lungs flutter in last gasps as broken open ribs shudder. Sounds from inside the great doors leave the companions of Dorotea in shock. Sounds like horde of ravenous beasts bang from behind the doors.


    Regaining their composure, wiping down blades and washing their faces. The screaming from inside has died down but still shadows of violence within come from under the door. Growls and sounds of bestial slaughter come to an end. Persephone looks to Dorotea, ��Are you ready?�� Dorotea nods and at once all her companions charge the door, blowing it from the hinges and laying low the Ghastly Ghouls who were behind it.


    Inside in the dim light, the din of flesh ripping and bones being torn free from joints has come to an end. A great multitude of Lost Souls stand, motionless save for heavy breathing. Beyond on a raised Pedestal are a Sickly Boy and a Ghastly Woman. A Retarded Child wrapped in gleaming gold silks, cuddled up to a Morbid Glutton with eyes of spiteful hate, a laughable Vile Harlot in scarlet robes.


    The Lost Souls surge forward, their eyes white and skin burned black from endless centuries living in smoke and sulphur. A tumult of violence is unleashed at Hermes, Persephone, Artemis and Dorotea plunge into battle. Bashing the brains from the unholy, spilling putrid blood and knocking eyes free from their hateful skulls.


    After an eternity ofstabbing, smashing and slashing through these unworthy feral Ghouls, none stand. All defeated in a writhing mass of bodies left restless even with fatal wounds. The Damned have no mercy in killing, they just scream and wiggle limbless stumps until splashed with sacred oil and incinerated before the silent Fisher King.


    The companions are all in awe that the famous, all powerful God of renowned, who it was said to be the equal of all the old Gods combined, is a sick child. Half blind and suffering regular convulsions, too mentally stunted to do more than groan and drool in the arms of his fat whore mother. The child wrapped in the finest scarlet silks and spotted furs looks malnourished, eyes milky and mouth agape in a half sleep of near death. His skin black like the darkest obsidian.


    Covered in festering wounds and pink scars on his close cropped hair and face, sightless eyes crawl with flies. A malnourished but hansom child. A life that would never be, strangled out by the crimes of his massive pale prostitute mother beside him. Shrouded in Purple and Gold, her panicked eyes darting for help. Her goons lie eviscerated in the hall, she howls for some savior, the last thing she would do is admit to the perversity she has wrought on the innocent, acting as the regent to the mindless child�� the Fisher King.


    If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    The Vile Harlot whispers hateful accusations and lists of those to be killed in her mentally challenged Son��s ear. Who despite being almost unable to have any independent thought, is the most powerful psychic in the universe, melding reality from his horrible mother��s spite and schizophrenic persecution mania. She twists his fingers and digs her nails deep into his hand as if this abused child will snap into action from his drooling and semi comatose state.


    It is a farce, the world has been mutilated for centuries based on the whims of some disgusting criminal who groomed her son to corrupt time and space with abuse and evil magic. The Epoch of the Fisher King is a puppet regime of this nasty prostitute who answers to the evil sorcerer King Sorsos, the ancient demon worshipper and necromancer.


    Artemis, seeing the truth of what has swept over the world, sending unrest and an age of insanity looks to Persephone, who looks to Hermes who looks at Dorotea. She understands what must be done, freeing this innocent child from the misused mantle of a God.


    Dorotea raises her sword smashing the Fisher King who disappears in a flash of smoke and shrill shrieks of the slimy prostitute. Holding up scared arms carved with curses in the magical Enochian language of John Dee. The Vile Harlot screams, ��Wait! I am the Queen, a Prophet!��


    Hermes with his new golden radiance of a holy Angel of Death strikes the Harlot deep in the chest with his Scythe, obliterating the spine and protruding from her back. No death only more obese blithering. Artemis takes a Golden Arrow from her quiver, taking a powerful pull, striking 3 arrows at once in the Harlots eyes and center of the forehead. Where the third eye would be located in a spiritual being, surely to cause eternal death, it does not.


    The Vile Harlot points a clawed stubby finger at Persephone and is about to hurl some accusation or insult. With uncommon vitriol The Goddess silences her with violence. Persephone pulls the three arrows out, that also breaks the Harlots cheek bones, nose and upper mandible free, revealing a chasm in her skull where a face once was holding the power a glimpse of the swirling supernova.


    The Gods gasp, this should not be. Persephone divines a gout of blue flame from the heart of a fallen star and strikes it deep into the hallow skull of the Harlot, dripping magma and burning atoms of the stuff creation and destruction are made of. It does not stop the Harlot from waving around spastic and belligerently.


    Persephone dashes another white hot bolide of starfire into the chest cavity of the morbidly obese monstrosity, a witch of the cruelest order. Profanity made flesh. Again no end to this madness. Hermes says, ��This is unnatural, some kind of inverted physics is at work in this profane Homunculus.��


    Dorotea not gasping the gravity of this false being with a God in its thrall is just tired, her feet hurt and her own mental anguish makes her want to scream and run and fall into a pile to cry for her own life. Takes her Golden Sword and slices off the Head of the Vile Harlot with an intense scream of rage and pain, decapitates the head from the shoulders of the Vile Harlot, then running away in tears. Leaving it to roll to the feet of Artemis teeth still gnashing, who holds it up to Hermes and says, ��One of us is behind this, this is the power of a God in the wrong hands.��


    The Gods Hermes, Artemis and Persephone join their spiritual form in a triangle of idle primordial forces, creating a rip in the universe of not just heat but also the inverse, the gripping cold of a blackhole around the Harlot who is still screaming and wailing. Joining hands in complex mudras, opening their third eyes into three fiery rays of death. They join hands, encircling the Harlot. Cosmic intensity flashing white and black, turquoise and magenta. Crying out sacred words of power, creation and destruction, with a boom of tearing time and space, great flash of light from their eyes, fries the flesh of the Vile Harlot into ash like paper in the wind.


    Leaving this place of the sick and tormented. Dorotea sees the Heavens have opened up. Where once were scenes of butchery and torture, suffering and disease. Now there are happy children, dancing holy men freed with their wounds, fathers once executed and rotting on walls come home bathed in pale blue light of redemption. The Lepers and Syphilitic now healed, free and whole again.


    Where once they were blind with missing noses and eyes, black limbs from gangrene, now there is a vitality and where fountains once overflowed with stink and plague. Crystal waters of healing spring from the ground. Corpses and body parts littering the walls and hillsides now bloom into flowers and trees of plenty.


    The city of Jerusalem is freed from false doctrines and repressive dogma. Free to live how they please after 1000 generations of torment has come to an end. This was once the seat of Solomon in his human form, long since torn from the kingdom of wisdom and truth to a shunned place to suffering and abuse.


    A new era of truth is possible with the false God cast out. The Temple is rededicated to the Goddess Cult. The priesthood of the false God dismissed and jailed. Resurrecting the ancient pantheon of the Canaanite people. Feeling a joy, Hermes takes to the sky on golden wings, soaring above in a radiant morning light after years of dark skies. Artemis and Persephone smile at Dorotea, a rare moment of serenity after centuries of misery and misrule.

 Chapter 15. The day of the Lion Tamer, The Dying Clown and the Soldadas

    Dorothea��s sisters woke up early. Rolling out of bed with Pancho��s Officers, they went down to the riverbank to wash up before the sun came up. They thought of what to do next, hearing about the Carnies that had kidnapped Dorothea they thought that kidnapping the Owner of the Circus would be fun.


    Maybe cut his eye lids off and stitch him up in a sack with wild animals, a couple Coyotes and a Bobcat. Let them fight it out. The Clowns gave them the creeps. The less clowns this world had the better, they could pick off the strays. A couple of the Indio scouts said they have been seeing strange painted faces peeking around but no tracks.


    Word is its the ghosts of the Train Explosion. It could be, they were never superstitious but that is more terrifying than rapist clowns walking around with no paint so no one knows who they are.


    They sneak in to see Dorothea, who is now very sick. Her wounds have become infected and the supplies to help are not in Mexico. This is now the real motive to go out and find medicine. Grabbing some weapons and horses the sisters move out.


    Wary of Pershing��s Punitive Expeditionary Cavalry, they hope that they can slip in and out with out too much bloodshed. Still seeing exotic Animals on the prairie is amusing to them. Hippos of Giraffes in the rivers, Monkeys in the trees, Tigers in the lowlands. They wonder how Pancho will use his pride of Lions?


    Passing a Government checkpoint of Mexican Marines, local families have their suitcases dashed to the ground, their chickens and donkeys seized and the men are beaten with rifle butts and shot when they resist. Piles of corpses fill ditches to each side of the road. In this part of Mexico it is common majority of men who did not join the Revolution are taken away to nameless graves, leaving mostly widows and fatherless children. Only Soldados will survive here.


    Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    The girls decide to divide into snipers to the East and West, Carolota and Carmen lie in wait to cover Rosita with hunting rifles. The more incognito looking Rosita will go into town to buy medicine.This does not seem dangerous on the face of it. They had spent their entire adolescence growing up amongst this turbulent time, but the older they get the steeper the odds.


    In small village they scout, there seems to be no Mexican Marines. Just the regular folk, smoking corncob pipes on porches, sweeping the board walkways and tending to horses. Making it to the local store, able to get disinfectants, alcohol and bandages.


    Home free Rosita walks the opposite direction of where she came from, in case she is being watched to throw off any lurking Americano. Heading east instead a ways to get a feel if she was followed, she walks directly into a group of Carnies and Clowns encamped beside a river. In the center The Lion Tamer. Who��s eyes are bandaged behind bloody rags, gored out by Lion claws. A face mutilated but still very much in charge with an air of cruelty. She notices they have also scavenged the battle for mounted machine guns and rifles. They were armed to the teeth and looking for someone to take out their frustration on��


    At nightfall Carolota and Carmen cannot find Rosita who went into town, falling back to gather the Soldaderas who left behind when The Villaistas broke camp to engage the Mexican Government Marines. Holding out hope stragglers of the Villa Cavalry has at least scouts in the area they shoot off a flare gun scavenged from a prior raid on the Marines. They hope Pancho Villa��s Northern Army will notice their absence and come to the rescue.


    The 2 Sisters stay to the outskirts of the Gringo town they think is McAllen, Texas but there is no way to know for sure. Crawling thru the chaparral they hear the distorted music of a broken organ grinder from the Circus. In firelight they see their sister Rosita badly beaten but alive, tied to a mid sized sailboat. The Clowns sound very drunk but there is something that uneases them they can��t figure out about the place. They missed a group of Clowns behind them with boat roars, clubbing them unconscious.


    Hours or days later Carolota is woken by Carmen. They are in a flooded stone basement, it looks like an ancient dungeon from the Conquistador era. The water is not fresh, they must be near the Sea. Looking to the walls they see dead girls at every few feet a rusty chain bolted to the wall in various states of decay.


    They gasp, in the corner two glassy eyes blink, followed by the raspy laugh of a dying man. Carmen has smuggled a lighter, flicking it open she is horrified to see the bruised face of a bald clown. He says, ��Don��t be afraid, we are in the same boat now.��

 Chapter 16. Dorotea Remembers…

    Awaking in the Healers Cave, Dorotea is alone. Sounds of water flowing intrigues her. She explores a little and finds an underground stream, opening into a large chamber with natural light coming down from a hole in the cave above. The Revolutionaries grow herbs and healing plants here. Its been so long since she went swimming, she steps into the pale blue water that is warm to the touch.


    Dorotea feels a ferocious need to escape. Like a possessed spirit she dashes into danger. Plunging into the caverns waters up to her neck. With out knowing how to swim she sinks down over her head. Arms scrambling for something to grab onto. Feeling a miraculous guiding hand, she pops up to see a bizarre vision. Dorotea sees her sisters in a dark room also full of water, but this room is unpleasant, full or rats and roaches climbing over dead children.


    Dorotea cries out, The Gypsy Medium runs in and pulls her from the water. Helping her back to the room where she slept. The Gypsy Woman knows the suffering Dorotea has tried to suppress. The true nature of H.T. Barstowe and his Circus is the trafficking of women and girls to wealthy Americans, but there is a worse truth. The Gypsy Woman helps Dorotea lay down and with a silver locket puts Dorotea into a trance to bring up the hardest memories for some kind of catharsis.


    Her head full of laughter and the evil spirits of confusion. Swirling into a memory, Dorotea remembers being dragged away from her life. She remembers the Circus looking half collapsed from a hurricane. Torn tents and leaning poles that were never bothered to be fixed after the storm season. Inside the Tents were moldy walls dripping dirty water. She hears angry sounds of animals being mistreated. Sounds of violence and suffering.


    Dorotea remembers being in a wire cage meant for chickens so small she had to curl up in a fetal position. Many other girls were in other cages of various sizes. In the room wealthy men walked in, inquiring on girls and being told prices. In the shadows beyond H.T. Barstowe sits like Lucifer in Paradise Lost, brooding, unblinking and full of malevolence. The disparity in the room is stark, Barstowe on red velvet and gold rococo couch surrounded by extravagant candelabras filled with dozens of candles. The other side of the room, rusted iron and dirty wire like a slaughterhouse.


    The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    Cages were taken away into horse carts, others were brought in. Dorotea��s cage and several others were carried into a train car. She is panicked but feels so drowsy, they must have drugged her with Opium. She can just bring her self to muster the strength to kick open her cage. Feeling some give to the door. She kicks it over and over until her cage spills onto the floor. She can hear moaning and sees light coming from a curtain at the back of the train car.


    Dorotea creeps up to the curtain and peering inside sees a group of 5 Clowns surrounding a girl a few years older than her who looks half asleep. Dorotea feels dirty just looking at it, too quick a glance to understand the mechanics of what is taking place. Just how unnatural it seems. Like a dying cow being appraised by butchers who don��t care its still alive when they begin cutting off hunks of flesh.


    Dorotea slides behind the curtain to the other side of the train. There are more of these profane shadow puppet shows going on. Seeing another antechamber with light and groans within, she peeks. This room has several skinless victims in a pile of corpses vomiting on each other, covered in maggots, snakes and spider webs while horrifically scarred men in top hats and tails work a movie camera.


    She feels sick, something worse is going on in the back of the car. Skipping several other curtained horrors she moves to the back of the train. Here she hears a kind of violence that made her shudder. As she pulls back the curtain H.T. Barstowe looks like a wild man, matted hair and chunks of meat and sinew in beard. Surrounded by Dead Girls equally feral. Covered in blood and looking directly at her with eyes like a snake, and teeth like a Lion. He has butchered these girls and collected their blood in a bucket that he is drinking from. He leaps forward and thats when her brain short circuits and after that nothing.


    In her minds eye, she sees lightning striking a Watchtower, lighting its wooden core ablaze. The Structure that held her life burns to the ground. She thinks of Moran farm, its on fire, her sisters are in danger and all around her forces against her are building strength, while unforeseen helpers are called by the universe to cross her path.


    She awakens knowing she must save her sisters��

 Chapter 17. The day of the Lion Tamer, The Dying Clown and the Soldadas. Part II

    Carolota and Carmen know this is bad, and don��t plan on waiting around to see how bad. Carotlota has a hairpin that made quick work of her shackle, Carmen has managed to pull her shackle completely out of the wall. Breaking rusted bolts and bending metal with sheer will power. Swings it like a weapon against her own hand to test its use to crack a skull open.


    The girls smile at each other. It will kill. Carolota searching the room finds an old shelf by the door with old tools. Every thing here is so old, possibly 1700��s or older. Picking up a hammer and something like an icepick but squared off on the side possibly something a blacksmith would pry off horseshoes with.


    The imprisoned clown noticing they are free begins to howl for the guard. A couple kicks from each girl with his head bouncing off the stone wall and he is quiet again. Rosa is out cold, before they can attend to her chains, footsteps come from the hallway behind a heavy oak door reenforced by iron bars. Each girl dashes back to her spot on the wall, attempting to make it seem like they are still shackled but would not pass close inspection.


    The door opens and the blinded Lion Tamer, Manheim Eidelman comes in with two large Thugs from the crew that loads up the equipment and tents to move on. The Lion Tamer remains by the door, the Thugs go to Rosa and The Clown. Unlocking their shackles, dragging them to the door. The girls scream and kick in protest. The Lion Tamer, with sound alone runs up and gives each of them a ferocious whipping across the face and hands until he is out of breath. If he wasn��t blinded he would have seen neither girl is convincingly shackled.


    With that, the Lion Tamer and Thugs walk out the door and turn the lock. Both the girls feel ashamed they didn��t seize the moment to save Rosa but like with any act of violence, there is a moment to build up the wherewithal to strike.


    Alone in this dungeon of horrors. They begin to appraise their situation. Seeing the Dead Girls, the small details begin to weigh on them. Flies buzzing, maggots crawling, the rot, the bloat, the stench. They must get out of here. Walking the edges of the room they find its not level.


    This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.


    There is a ledge near the door, and stairs going down lower to a flooded room that they have no inclination to wade into to search. Listening carefully they hear heavy beams above creaking, not directly above but somewhere far off. Its cold here, they must be far underground in a mine or a sub-basement to have this lack of warmth.


    Going into the pockets of the Dead Girls they find coins, a little paper money, and a folding knife. All of it is slimy from decomposing body fluids. They toss the coins into the water and they hear a disheartening sound. A large animal plunging into the water echoing. Now in a race to get out they begin prying at the door. Its massive and unable to be broken down. Looking through the bars its complete darkness beyond. The sound of something big in the water is now overwhelming.


    With no other exit Carmen makes a gesture like cutting her wrist looking to Carolota for reassurance, Carolota shakes her head. Taking the lighter they smuggled in one last defiant act she lights the paper money on fire one by one and placing them under the door, in cracks, lighting spider webs on fire. The small fires start to whither so both girls begin kicking the door which acts as a flue giving more air to the struggling flame.


    Splinters from the damage they had caused with the knife and other tools created perfect kindling to start the corners and bottom of the door on fire. Its a very little fire and keeps going out on the damp wood and lack of air. As the final blue wisps of flame go out. They are shaking in fear from what ever is coming now sounding only about 100 feet from them.


    They pull the clothing off the corpses, shoving it around the bars and underneath the door, into cracks. This has a better result possibly due to putrid body fluid. What ever is coming is so terrifying that Carolota and Carmen have lost all sense of decorum or dignity for the dead. Yanking corpses, tearing arms still chained the wall out of sockets to make a pile of dead girls against the door which has turned the flames from bluish and yellow wimpy flames into a real fire. Just as the edges of the door are completely engulfed they shudder as behind them a massive beast is running full speed and reveals its self�� Its the Baby Elephant!


    Standing there making friendly sounds with his trunk. The girls laughing, at the same time crying uncontrollably. They hug each other so tightly their ribs pop. They run down the stone steps to hug the Baby Elephant. Startled backs away, stamping his feet in a dominance display, turns in a circle but doesn��t run. His small yellow eyes friendly and they see now he is tangled in a green rope. This is perfect!


    They try to rig the rope to him, and the bars on the door but he doesn��t get the idea, doesn��t like it tied around him and thrashes around. Finally getting it secured they try to coax him into pulling. Only when they begin to wade into the darkness he tries to follow them and can��t. The door is too heavy and he begins to cry. Coming back they decide to let the fire burn until it compromises the integrity of the wood enough to kick the old door apart.

 Chapter 18. Xavier and Dorotea back on the Border

    Xavier and Maritza. The Soldadera he first met do recon on the town with. Dorotea is with them but her haunted eyes are downcast and suffering some introspective torment. Looking for any thing unusual in the town, signs of distress or any thing to show them a direction to begin looking. They hear singing of an old dusty Borracho, drinking wine and laying on the ground against a tree. His sombrero is dirty and bent and his eyes are yellow from the drink, his mustache and goatee slimy from sneezing. When they try to ask him about the sisters he yells,��?C��llate G��ey!�� and begins singing again.


    Not to be discouraged Xavier rolls up his sleeves and seizes the Borracho by his shirt and pulls him to his feet. The Mexican Wino throws a couple drunken punches and falls on his butt laughing. Xavier infuriated charges to beat the Borracho senseless but the Soldadera, Maritza stops him. Instead trying a kinder approach. She says, ��?Pardon Patron. Estamos buscando a unas chicas que estan desaparecidas, viste algo?�� He brightens up and tells them he did see girls being dragged into a boat by suspicious looking men in Clown paint.


    Dorotea asks why he didn��t help them. The Borracho says in broken English, ��Because I am a coward. But if you will allow me, I will bring some of ��Mi Amigos de las Calles�� to help.�� He points them down river to the east and assures he will come with all his wino buddies from the river. Maritza says, ��Follow your sisters, I will raise an army of the Soldaderas in the Villages we can trust.�� Parting ways Xavier and Dorotea move East along the River. They often duck to avoid US Army patrols.


    They hope they find the Circus before they get to ��Bagdad Beach�� because a large force of Mexican Government Counter-Revolutionaries is camped there, and he will absolutely be shot of deserting if captured and turned over to Pershing��s forces.


    Sure enough, the Barstowe European Carnival is camped near the crumbling onion domes and minarets of Playa Bagdad, Tamaulipas State of Mexico. Bagdad Beach, a Middle Eastern fantasy themed ghost town on the flood plane where the Rio Grande flows out to the Gulf. It was abandoned after being torn apart by severe storms in the 1890��s. Once a major port of Confederate smuggling weapons and exports via Mexico, now it lies submerged and forgotten except by bandits and starving dogs.


    Xavier doesn��t see any Military, US or Mexican but that doesn��t mean there aren��t scouts or snipers waiting in the darkness. He considers his uniform and Red Sash of the Villaistas, he doesn��t see any good reason to give the game away. He feels unsettled in this place, it has long had a reputation for missing persons, wild animals and a great multitude of exposed bones among the gnarled trees. Blackened stone, crumbling pillars of leaning towers and faded tile mosaics are all thats left of this lost kingdom straight out of 1001 Arabian Nights.


    He will knock out one of he Carnies and take their clothes to give an air of neutrality if things go bad. Xavier uses a pair of binoculars to spy the lay out of the Carnival. He doesn��t see any obvious location where his Sisters would be held captive. He hands the binoculars to Dorotea. She looks at groups of Carnies, Freaks and Clowns sitting beside fires. She sees the Medium beside her Gypsy Wagon. That is where they will start.


    Esma, the Gypsy Woman sits beside her own fire, cooking soup. She has a distaste for Circus acts since her Daughter was killed. She has tried to flee several times but Barstowe or his Henchmen seem to have a precognition for finding her so she eventually stopped trying. Once she had boarded a ferry from near Niagara Falls and they came and took her from her Hotel across the border in Canada. Another time she had tried to flee in the middle of a snowstorm in Denver, didn��t make it more than a few hundred feet before Barstowe��s Middle Eastern henchmen appeared like apparitions to carry her away.


    Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.


    These are spiritual forces of great evil she is up against and despite her years of studying magic, she has never been a match for the Occultist Barstowe who consorts with Demons and raises Spirits at will. Her divination is more of a parlor trick. Barstowe has studied with the Great Occult Schools in the Orient. She shudders at the things he has done for power. Dorotea approaches her quietly. The Gypsy Esma pulls Dorotea into the Wagon to talk away from prying eyes.


    Safely inside the Gypsy Wagon they embrace. The Gypsy says, ��Im glad you are safe but you shouldn��t have come here. You have no idea how dangerous this place is.�� Dorotea says, ��I understand exactly what this place is, I had to come for my sisters. They were kidnapped yesterday. Do you know where they would be?��


    Esma, the Gypsy Woman pauses, not sure she should send Dorotea to a place where she is likely to be killed but feeling a duty to fix horrors she was a part of by inaction she tells her. ��There are ruins here, beneath the Tents there are foundations of a Spanish fortress, Crypts and older Aztec tunnels bellow leading to the Ocean. That is where Barstowe keeps his Victims.��


    Dorotea wonders if she really wants to know the gravity of it. She does. She asks, ��What does Barstowe want them for? Is it to sell their bodies?�� The Gypsy Woman breaks down in tears, ��No, its worse than that. He does sell girls to sadists and perverts who like torture and cruelty, but there is something far worse here. Barstowe is a Sorcerer, one of the greatest in the world. But he is also an ancient killer. The Spirit that inhabits his body alive in the Crusades, alive in the Old Testament. He faced Elijah as a rival Prophet, High Priest of Aries-Baal. What no one realizes Yahova, ��Yaldabaoth�� is the Devil. History is distorted to profit the ghouls and bottom feeders who enslave the masses with perverted Gospels and intentionally obscure translations to hide the true face of the Devil. Every Church and Synagogue is devoted to is the vengeful god of sacrifice, slavery, theft and genocide. Barstowe serves the fallen King, possessed for millennia by morbid angels, Sorsos. A manifestation of an Order of Angels that feed on suffering and terror. He survives centuries on consuming not just blood but the spirit, the soul. He uses human sacrifice as a way to gain power. Not just money, but power over souls. His weakness is he has no memory of many of his lives, he must delve into tombs and warrens for traces of his former power. He discovered fragments of the Magic of King Solomon in the Holy Land, power to raise the dead and perverts the knowledge of the Universe to enrich a baleful mafia of corrupt priests and political leaders turned to the Secret Oath of Zion. He is one of many hidden followers of an ancient cult of butchers. He worships a false God that mirrors the creator but is like a ravenous wolf who hunts the blind and lost. His inner circle are ancient Vampires, Serpents, Changelings, Hungry Ghosts and Spiritual Parasites.��


    Xavier stalks the edges of the camp. He sees carts that look like Military issue. Opening a canvas tarp he sees what he is looking for, weapons. He is able to liberate several boxes of ammunition, a Helmet and a belt fed Machine Gun. Lighting the rest of the ammo on fire he circles around to the other side of the camp looking for Barstowe or his Henchmen.


    As the boxes of bullets and mortars begin exploding he waits, watches who reacts, and who doesn��t. He sees Barstowe stick his head out of the door of a Train he hadn��t noticed before. Its a black boiler fueled locomotive. Barstowe does not leave, instead sending out a group of well armed men.


    Xavier opens fire, punching holes in these Gentlemen��s formal dinner wear. Clearly not Carnies or regular Circus folk, these are the type who come here for expensive delights not on the regular menu of Circus acts. Xavier turns the machine gun to another group of rough characters who come running out of the temporary camp beside the Big Top tents.


    Mowing down a dozen Thugs with axe handles and pry bars. Just as a sinister group of Freaks and Clowns comes running from the Tents the Machine Gun jams. Xavier runs off between crates and carriages, scrambling under horses and hopping over passed out drunks. Trying to get back to the Ammo cart he runs right into a pack of stray dogs eating trash.

 Chapter 19. The day of the Lion Tamer, The Dying Clown and the Soldadas. Part III

    The burning door now had serious fissures between boards, the bars and bolts holding it together were not red hot but touching them leave immediate welts. Trying to kick he boards out was not working. One slat would come free but the fire would die out on the neighboring boards. Leaning them back to build up a roaring fire again.


    The Baby Elephant who they named Pepito, is spooked by something. He struggles to climb the stairs and the girls see eyes in the water. Alligators must have followed him in. The Girls rush to help the Baby Pepito up the stairs, seconds away from his legs being bitten.


    Pepito cowers behind them. An Alligator climbs up the stairs he panics and batters down the burning door. Even as cute as he is, he likely weighs 500 pounds. As high as their waists, as big around as a horse with muscular arms and legs. Carolota and Carmen pick up burning boards for for light, and also picking up several other tools.


    They come to a great chamber littered with dead rats and pieces of broken furniture. Among the litter on the floor human shapes lie apparently sleeping. Several tunnels branch out and from several of them, Creeping Ghouls emerge. Carmen screams and immediately the ones sleeping jump up and hiss.


    Carolota waves her burning board at them and they recoil. Picking up bits of broken tables and chairs the girls try to light any piece of wood they can, pieces of paper and even dead rats but the Ghouls spread out trying to flank them.


    The baby elephant Pepito is bluff charging and stamping his feet. The Ghouls are awful, albinos with bulging eyes and fanged mouths dripping blood. Picking a random direction the girls run into the tunnel with out any of the Ghouls. Pepito struggles to run as fast as them, they slow down to urge him on and see the Ghouls, 8 or 10 of them shambling after them, naked and barefoot.


    Coming to a horizontal door they batter it open and emerge into a room that smells of animals. The girls go around setting the audience stands on fire, the Ghouls spilling into the room hesitant. Carolota and Carmen light the tent on fire. The ghouls panic and tear open the tent running away from the flames. Now free from threat of naked dead people the Sisters emerge into the night where gunshots and cries of the wounded fill the air.


    You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.


    Elsewhere Xavier enters Barstowe��s train with a bayonet attacked to his rifle. Entering a fancy Parlor that is empty he enters the next car a fine diner car, the next car is the sleeper. Kicking in doors to find several coffins, shooting holes in them before he kicks them over. Dead Girls are in each one. Moving on to find Barstowe he runs right into him. Barstowe��s eyes glow an orangish red, like pits of magma in blackened lids of cold obsidian. Xavier feels like he is paralyzed. As much as he wants to smash this criminal in the mouth with the butt of his rifle, punch the bayonet into his face, he can��t lift his arms.


    Barstowe is in complete control until a grimace of pain crosses his face. Dorotea and the Gypsy woman have crept in from the car behind and jabbed him in the back with two knives. Barstowe turns and smashes their heads together. Giving Xavier enough time to bring up he rifle and take the front right quarter of Barstowe��s forehead off. Jumping over Barstowe��s collapsed body. He puts Dorotea over his shoulder and drags the Gypsy out by her waist. Looking around the room, Xavier sees signs of Satanism. Candles, a black mirror, incarnations written in white and every where old blood, hardened black over surfaces of an Alter and suspended cages like those of a bird but more equipt to house a child. On the wall scrawled in a bloody hand, ��Curse the mothers of the dead! - Hesronot Shas.��


    Outside is pandemonium. Ghouls and Carnies are fighting beside Animals unleashed from their cages. The Freaks and Clowns, dressed in black were waiting off to each side, outside the Locomotive. Xavier drops Dorotea and fires a shot over their heads. The Freaks and Clowns are armed as well and raise their guns but part to let Xavier pass just as Carmen and Carolota come running with torches and sabres they found in the chaos. The Freaks and Clowns keep their distance but haven��t backed down.


    Xavier asks, ��Did you find Rosa? Carolota and Carmen shake their heads. The Gypsy Woman has started to wake up. Carolota asks her, ��Where would they keep our sister?�� The Gypsy says, ��In the last car of the train.�� Carmen asks, ��Where is Barstowe?�� Xavier smiles and states, ��He won��t be a problem, I left his brain all over the walls in there.�� Carolota says, ��Show me!�� Going back in the train Barstowe is gone, and so are all the Dead girls in the Coffins. Handing Esma, the Gypsy Woman a Revolver. He tells Carmen to stay with them, and he and Carolota rush to find Rosita.


    In the Darkness Rosita sees eyes watching her. A half dozen unblinking, glowing eyes. The Dying Clown groans in the corner. He is bleeding from a gut wound. He croaks, ��You awake over there?�� Rosita is too terrified to speak. The Clown says, ��Bring me some water.�� Several Dead Girls pounce on him, tearing into his arteries with dull teeth. He hysterically tries to scream and his throat is torn open so only sound he can make is wheezing from the hole in his larynx. Done quickly with the Clown��s drained corpse, the Dead Girls turn their attention to her.

 Chapter 20. The Aria of Aries II

    Dorotea awakens. Remembering the peril her Sisters were in, Zion is the last place she wants to be. She is in a great city, reminds her of the Ancient Empires of Assyria or Babylon. She walks among puddles with floating bodies. Burning palm trees sway in a wind storm. A great hurricane has torn this place into rubble. In the distance several Tornados surrounding the city rise thousands of feet in black spires of violence.


    In the wind, hail and pieces of ice hit her. This must be Bhagdad or Damascus. She sees mighty Ziggurats and Hanging Gardens. In the sky she sees lightning striking around the tallest structures, two Humanoid figures fall from the sky with the lightning. She knows instinctively this is Mithras and the corpse of Mercury, now housing the soul of the Demonic Wizard Solomon the Sorcerer.


    Dorotea darts between buildings. Monstrous Soldiers with faces like Orcs and Bats stalk the streets. She finds Ruins of a Temple and hides among shattered statues of a Great Demon Goddess with a wagging tongue and necklace of Severed Heads. Exploring the rooms she sees hideous murals of profane sex acts and funerary rites. She feels her skin cringe on the back of her neck as she hears crying. Dorotea sees the Little Girl from the Circus who ran off to tell on her. She realizes this must be the dead Daughter of the Gypsy.


    Dorotea comes to her and puts her hand on her shoulder. The Little Girl is bathed in white light, her skin taking a subtle bluish tint, her eyes have lost their color, now bleached white from death. The Little Girl is startled and asks, ��What are you doing here?�� Dorotea thinks about that and replies, ��It seems like every time i get hurt or knocked unconscious in the real world, I end up here and only go back when I am killed in this world. Im not sure how it works���� The Little Girl starts crying again, ��I don��t want to die again, it hurt so bad���� Dorotea feels sympathy for the shade of the Little Girl, but also sick to her stomach looking at so much death.


    She asks the Little Girl what her name is. The Little Girl says, ��Orinthia Zarathustra, but sometimes people call me Ozzy or Ozma.�� Dorotea asks, ��Why do they call you Ozma?�� The Little Girl replies, ��Because my Mother��s real name is Esma.��


    Dorotea asks, ��What happened to you? How did you come to be in this scary place?�� The Little Girl says, I was playing with the children of the Dwarfs, who they dress in costumes to act out great battles. The Three Middle Eastern Sages of the Carnival, The Magi came and told me my father, Mr Barstowe wants to see me in the tunnels beneath the Bigtop. It was a trick, when I got to the main chamber there was Dead Girls there and they held me down while the The Sages stabbed me. My father was there and smiled while they killed me, they meant to enslave my Spirit. Last thing I remember is the Dead Girls drinking my blood and as my spirit left my body, I saw bloody horrible monsters come out of the tunnels to carry me down in the dark to eat me.��


    Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.


    Dorotea shudders. What a horrible and sad way to die. She wouldn��t wish that on any one, except maybe Barstowe and his cult of evil blood drinkers. Dorotea hugs her and they decide to help each other get back to the real world. Dorothea says, ��Your father is Barstowe?�� The Little Girl nods her head and Dorotea says, ��How awful, I couldn��t imagine being around such an evil person every day.��


    The little girl Ozma replies, ��He wasn��t always named Barstowe. It��s just a mask the Ancient Enemy wears. The body of Barstowe was once a Surgeon during the enlightenment era, a resurrectionist. The Spirit is something unimaginable. A burning streak of light wrapped in a maelstrom of shadow. His flesh is a British Lord, was a financier of the Confederacy for the Crown, a grandmaster of Secret Rites. There is a statue of him in London and Skull and Bones at Yale, a society he founded to serve his ancient master. The one we think of as God is actually the Devil. This was discovered by an ancient King of Israel, who became the spiritual parasite King Sorsos. He is an orchestrator of evil foreign powers who want to control our perception of reality with magic, child butchers and pedophiles of unlimited wealth. Feudal Bankers, Royal Predators and Vampiric Lords who are puppets of nameless Secret Societies to woo our Ruling Class and Robber Barons to betray us from the inside, tampering with our feelings, our ideals, planting hateful thoughts and making us fooled into believing we are wrong for suspecting them. Wars and Assassinations are rituals to pool spiritual energy into warping the essence of things we see and remember differently. Curators of lies, grifters and schemers who see humanity as cattle to feed dark desires. Passing laws to help the Hidden Hand steer the worlds events. He has been murdering girls for centuries, he is the reason they never caught Jack The Ripper or why they seem to always hang a fool for the vulgar conspiracies that shape history.�� Dorotea is shocked by the wisdom of such a little girl, almost as if she is influenced by some greater intelligence of the spirit world.


    Elsewhere, high in the Temple at the top of the pyramid, Mithras and Mercury: The Black Knight arrive to hold counsel with Aries. Aries sits on a throne pedestal, unmoving, unblinking in a state of dreamless sleep, eyes open but dormant. He is so ancient his skin has become like stone. A storm god of the primordial time before time, when glaciers and lands long since under the sea were world powers.


    He was born of night in the Epoch of Gemini. A time so distant that it is the fertile ground of the next stage of reality to be born from it in a great circular dance of Epochs. The Aquarian Epoch will swallow up the Age of Pisces bringing either a great spiritual awakening. A dawn of an age of abundance and enlightenment, or it will be a rising of darkness and atrocity to end life in all worlds touched by the eternal night that comes after the final war.


    Aries looks at Mithras and Mercury with contempt. Mithras looks on with wily eyes, not disciplined enough to control his outward emotions. Always trying to corner an advantage or for any sign of weakness. The most contemptible personality type. His cult was born around a ��Great Hunt�� where a young man slays a great bull of the Age of Taurus, but he was a minor player even in his own age. A despicable little wheeler and dealer with no loyalty and no wisdom despite his reputation as all knowing and powerful.


    Mithras is just another calculating sailor on the sea of betrayal, ready to jump ship when its most advantageous. Aries lets a rare smile cross his goatish face, thinking ��He will be the First to Die.�� Kneeling Mithras says, ��Great Lord Aries ��Lord of the High Places.�� How can we be of Service?��

 Chapter 21. Revolt of the Borrachos

    On the horizon about 75 torches come into view. A rowdy crowd of homeless Drunks and Hobos are yelling, waving burning sticks, throwing bottles at the perimeter of the Barstowe European Circus, that is camped outside the ruined town of Bagdad beach.


    Clowns with clubs and shovels come running out to meet them. Almost as if by floating down from the ether, The Abyssinian, The Arabian and the Hindu Aghori emerge at the front of the group of savage Carnies. With a roar the Borrachos charge forward in a tumult of violence. Bloody Clowns and stumbling Drunks fight it out tooth and nail.


    The Three Middle Eastern Sages walk amongst the riot. Slapping Borrachos down, plunging jeweled daggers into their lungs and hearts. Not aggressive, more like the work of disinterested butchers. In the firelight their features seem inhuman, Golden eyes and unnaturally long teeth. There is silence as the beaten and bloody Clowns roll around in the dirt with the last surviving Borrachos.


    In the distance comes a scream, a series of shrill war cries and the thunder of horse hooves beating the earth in a great multitude. Gun shots and sounds of glass breaking come from the other side of the Camp. On horseback, hundreds of Mexican female Rebels come smashing into the Circus encampment with rifles and swords. Tossing bottles stuffed with burning rags onto carts and crates.


    Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.


    The evil Sages sneer and like fearsome birds of prey. Unfurling great wings from under their black cloaks. They take to the sky faster than the eye can see, disappearing into the cloudless night. The Soldaderas hack and hit Freaks and Clowns from horseback. Some swing improvised weapons with large stones wrapped in a leather throng to dash the brains out of Carnies, some weald whips with barbed and weighted ends like a Roman scourge, still others utilizing farm equipment like hatchets, scythes and iron gears from a mechanized cotton loom.


    A couple of the Soldaderas stop and look up at the sky. Screaming and diving from their mounts as the Three Sages come violently down from the starry sky. Lifting victims up to great heights while ravaging them with fangs, dropping them when limp. Striking others with jeweled daggers so quick women think they have been shot as a hole erupts a torrent of blood from their breast bones. Several have scrambled between carts and boxes to uncover tripod machine guns.


    Martiza being one of the more experienced has a belt fed machine gun roaring into the sky like great anti aircraft cannons in the great war. As this is happening a Mexican Marine, of the Huerta faction loyal to the Government has stumbled into the fray. Dashing back to report ��A Raid by Pancho Villa and Zapata��s forces against a civilian Carnival!��


    At the sight of Machine guns, the Three Sages retreat to the night sky. Maritza thinks where she has seen them before, they remind her of the Eastern Wisemen from a Nativity play. Although clothed in black turbans, in the heat of the desert she almost felt like she see crowns and jewels of some antiquity she can��t name. Some far distant culture of the silk road only dreamed of by the orientalist fiction she read as a schoolgirl. She remembers a story of 3 Wisemen from the East following the Star of Bethlehem to the nativity.

 Chapter 22. Fall of the Last Temple to Ashtoreth

    The moon hangs low in the sky, giant like a silver mirror and confidant. So massive and majestic it pulls mighty tides and exerts great influence over the emotions and temperaments of all life on this planet. The celestial bodies seem larger than ever before, sizzling in the ether of the silky lavender colored sky.


    Inside the Temple there is a ritual of Lamentations. Thousands of seers, healers, holy women and witches of light radiate from a central pool of visions, under which crystals and gem stones of all kinds are surging with cosmic power. Weeping and cutting their scalps the multitude of women of all ages and ability levels rock back and forth in unison, a wailing of great transmuted suffering. Vestal virgins dash their naked bodies onto broken glass, old women commit suicide in pits of flame.


    They are channeling and transmitting the pain of millions around the world to be digested here and returned into the earth by the Goddess. This is a daily ritual in the hours before Dawn and after Sunset when the sky holds shades of purple and deep blue. Translating the last wishes of the dying and hopes of the unloved.


    Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work!


    At once every seer, psychic and holy woman feels struck, on a spiritual wavelength as if by a battering ram. Shattering their communion of solace. A great cry echoes in the night where the darkest clouds come up against the brilliance of the gates of dawn.


    From the sunrise pour thousands of souls of the dead warriors from Epochs known and unknown. Horses, chariots, winged valkyries, dragons, monstrosities and perversities undreamt of even by the realms of fantasy.


    Astoreth stands beyond the Temple in a great manifestation of power, thousands of feet tall. The crown on her head touching the heavens. Her skin black and glassy like all the stars in the sky held in a veil of volcanic glass. With a beautiful voice like a heavenly chorus, she calls to her familiars.


    Spirits of the air and sea, under the earth and monstrosities who hold her love in their heart rise in a titanic rip in the ground. A well of souls shatters rock and boils rivers of black earth. Producing a hole in the atmosphere where black pastures of the bare naked universe interrupt the dawn. Her undead horde spills down onto the horizon while thunder and lightning strike the forrest ablaze into hellish visions distorted by wind and flame. The war that will decide the coming epoch has begun.

 Chapter 23. The day of the Lion Tamer, The Dying Clown and the Soldadas. Part IV

    Xavier and Carmen run into the Animal Boxcars, adding to the chaos they unlock the cages of the animals. Setting free recently recaptured Hippos, Orangutans, Tigers and Hyenas, to dash out into the night.


    Stepping from the Shadows, The Lion Tamer. Carmen gasps at his hideous appearance. Covered in bleeding rags, body smelling of gangrenous infection and holding a repeating rifle. With out a word he blindly opens fire. Xavi and Carmen scramble out of the way.


    Both trying to get intelligent shots off, but their rifles are bolt action. The sound of the lock and load slide bolt action draws more fire from a fresh clip as the Lion Tamer has reloaded.


    The Lion Tamer Manheim��s voice was like a strangled hiss. His eyes had a strange desperation like he wanted them to kill him. ��I know you, I knew your father. I bedded your mother before she looked like such a sweaty pig. She told me she would give me a bag of stolen coins if I killed him. We beat him to death and drowned him in horse piss in the street. I broke his head open with a piece of brick. When he died he pleaded for his life in Spanish while i dug his gold teeth out. When it was done I took a piece of his brain and tasted it. I spit it out because it reeked of tequila and stupidity����


    Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.


    The Lion Tamer throws a handful of broken silver teeth across the floor as a last insult. Suddenly in a shock, with out warning a Tigress smashes through the wall behind him. Dragging the Lion Tamer back into some dark feeding ground in the grassland. Sad shrieks are the last sound he ever makes while he is eaten alive.


    Running past Xavi and Carmen don��t even notice the Orangutan has gotten a hold of the Lion Tamers gun, darts off into the night.


    Entering the last train car, Xavier and Carmen are confronted by the Three Sages who appear like smokeless fire. Knowing this is well beyond the use of bullets or blades Xavier grabs Carmen kicks open the side door to flee the train.


    Back in the front of the train, the Gypsy Woman strokes Dorotea��s passed out face. She tells her the story of her youth with tears running down her face.


    ��I was born Esma Bireli in the belly of a ship, somewhere in between the port of Alexandria Egypt and London. My Mother was the daughter of a furniture seller in Cairo. My Father was a British Surgeon in the Mahadi war in Sudan. Wounded during a battle, he sent a letter for my mother to go to live on his family estate. She was turned away and ended up living on the streets of White Chapel with a small girl in 1882����


    Just then Xavier and Carmen seize open the door, ��We have to run, what ever is going on here is too much for us to deal with alone.�� The Gypsy asks, ��What about your sister?�� Xavier says, ��I need to get help, a priest or a nun, someone who knows about whats going on here.�� The Gypsy asks, ��What did you see?�� He replied, ��Evil Spirits���� just as cannon ball shatters the room.

 Unnumbered Chapter: The True Nature of the Relationship of Esma and Barstowe

    In 1888 Esma Bireli was 11 years old when her mother was butchered. Her mother was a part time hostess at a underground club for Lords and the London elite called ��Hellfire.�� Esma spent most of her days playing in the streets while her mother kept a night schedule. Esma would look for food and toys discarded in wealthy sections of the city. Often bringing home fruits and vegetables from trees hanging over grand fences. Her mother was also a prostitute. Not a street walker, but serviced men she met at work. One day while walking with Esma near the docks. She caught the eye of an Ships Captain with good disposition.


    This man Barstowe, was well connected in England. He was on an assignment to plot a hostile banking takeover in America with Baron Rothschild Sr, a member of Parliament. He would be in London for 2 months and wanted to act as the mentor and lover of Esma��s mother. He enjoyed her exotic eastern looks and used to regale her with stories of the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon. He was very generous with gold coins, bought them expensive meals, spelter busts of figures from antiquity, finest silks and perfumes so long as they could keep him company until sunrise.


    Barstowe seemed to never be available during the day. Esma didn��t like him. His wide mustache ending in jowled muttonchops reminded her of some lurking beast, like a Grey-wolf or bloodthirsty Bat in his top hat and tails. Even when smiling he radiated a subdued hostility, there was a hunger in his eyes. The way he fooled her Mother didn��t fool her. He seemed more like a stalking Lion than a suitor. Sometimes he came smelling like heavy cologne masking the coppery smell of blood. Many times his clothes had a stickiness matted in velvet and lace, stinking of ammonia and lye. Once he had unmissable scratch marks on his face and neck, one eye bloodshot like a ruby melting in the sun.


    This was the time of the Jack The Ripper killings. Esma��s mother seemed unbothered by girls bring killed in White Chapel because she ��didn��t work the streets.�� But Esma was wise beyond her years. She felt a dread around Barstowe. Like the devil had put on a mans flesh to walk the foggy streets and feast on the souls of the unwary. Esma followed Barstowe back to his quarters once before dawn, he stopped to argue with a drunk and beat the man and his oldest son to death with his cane. Leaving silenced cries with out so much as a glance over his shoulder or cautious glance then he went and slipped through the wrought-iron gate of ruined Church.


    Esma knew this was important. She ran home to tell her mother but she was asleep. Esma couldn��t stay awake so she curled up with her mother, not knowing this would be the last embrace they ever shared. By the time Esma awoke. Her mother had went to work and Esma planned to find out why Barstowe spent his days in a gated catacomb bellow a ruined Cathedral. Esma found some local children to accompany her journey into mystery. The kids waited until they were sure there was no-one inside. Climbing the old stone walls they gained access to the Church.


    It was one of the casualties of the purge of English Protestants against Catholics during the Holy Wars of Succession. This place and many others were burned down, and their lands gifted to friends of the King to enlarge their estates. Some did not and sat empty and shunned by passersby. Amongst overgrown bushes and tall windowless walls the once princely surrounding graveyard is not sinister. Wet statues of mourning mothers and weeping angels stand watch over putrid pools of forgotten Mausoleums.


    Entering the Churchyard the friends of Esma are startled by restless birds taking flight. There is nothing inviting about the fallen down Cathedral named ��Holy Ghosts of Gethsemane.�� All that was once Holy is gone, leaving on shrill birds cries, crickets and the rustling of scurrying creatures underfoot among mossy stones and razor sharp grasses. Only that of a place where there was once life and songs was now an echoing chamber of dripping rain, where roof and floor hold pooled water reflecting the rainclouds above. Several peaked portals lead to lower depths were the children knew they must go.


    Among the ruins there are many broken crypts showing bones in disarray. Esoteric carvings in Latin show the once Holy sepulchers now defaced and lying open to the sky. In a deep stairwell leading to a massive green bronze door is the lair where Barstowe��s co-conspirators hide. Vines and gnarled trees have upturned the ground here. Hundreds of years of dismal neglect leave a legacy of the cruel history of religions declaring war on civilians. Back and forth until only the rich and wellborn can live to see how the places of Catholic worship stand in looted squalor, among England��s stinking factories and polluted rivers.


    Esma trips on a tree root as the other children go running into the depths leaving her alone. She hears their laughter and running feet echo until the sound is gone and she is alone. Feeling a rat run across her leg she leaps up and realizes she has injured her foot in the fall. Looking back to the Mausoleum doors slamming in the wind, she knows this is the moment she must choose between safety and ridicule of the other children. Or picking up her torch and limping into the catacombs to find what horrors Barstowe has bellow. Suddenly she is struck over the head with such force she paws at her scalp to see if her skull is fractured. She sees a shovel withdrawing from her sight beyond the iron door of the crypt She to crawl up the stairs when a large shadow looms above the heavy doors, slamming them shut and chaining the gate. She loses consciousness.


    There is a reddish glow in the blackness. Sounds of crickets and night birds let her know she is outside again. Feeling an unbearable lightness like she is clothed only in the spirit, seeing her hands and body are gone, made of only black ash and sparkling gold dust. She was flying in her Phantom dreamworld. Slowly over a landscape that looked as if the horizon was painted by haunted hands. Esma knows she is not awake, amazing vistas of abject terror await her. This dream world is too beautiful to be the dingy decay and squalor of industrial London, of ghosts and starvation, of endless smoke stacks and cruel Lords carriages trampling limping families in the street.


    If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.


    Esma dreams of screaming children and distant baying of packs of dogs, of funerals beside empty graves, of martyred saints. The sky and the grasses were the color of dried blood caked on a painters palette. The sun was a ferocious yellow like the eyes of night creatures in a lantern. Surrounded by a fiery red bleeding into a star field of a violet canvas. Faded into the blackest soot of a mass grave in the sky. She heard voices in hundreds of languages, but she understood them all to mean, ��I don��t want to die.��


    Her astral spirit fluttered in the jet stream like a kite caught between chaotic bands of air. Cool and warm flows of wind, tugging at her soul towards unknown destinations in the blackness bellow. She looked down at her hands and they were as white as clouds in the summer, and totally transparent but given more weight in the darkness. She knew in this dream she was an apparition lost in time. Bellow her she saw the same tragedy play out with different casts through time.


    First she saw Barstowe soothing a little girl, above her his hand was raised with a dagger. The little girl was helping him paint a rough hewn sack in the shape of her self, with a expertly painted portrait of her face across the knotted fabric. In tears the little girl painting splotches of crimson, a bright arterial red. Barstowe seemed to be soothing her but he was chanting some obscure prayer lost to time.


    Esma flew past them looking back as this shade of a dream blends into the black earth opposite the impressionist burning sun. In silhouette she sees fast movement and a tangle of forms that reminded her of cats or rabbits trying to scratch each others eyes out.She almost convinced her self she saw the dagger falling and piercing supple flesh and lovely eyes again and again.


    Another scene with the same occult murder under way. A child too small to assign gender, could be a boy dressed in old fashioned smock of the era. The child is painting red on an effigy of himself self made out of rough potato sacks and balled up yarn stained by the grass. Barstowe or someone like him had a woman at his side and their clothes were that of tribal poverty, again the knives and before she could see the child��s murder her soul moved on.


    She sees a new vista the golden rays of morning light across a river. Beside a ramshackle church made of recycled wood and stones, again a little funeral party of missing children. Two this time and a group of men wearing black robes and long beards. The girls in elegant dresses happily painting red wounds on life-size home-made dolls in their likeness. She sees horrid old men were holding books aloft with large pins, awls and trowels for digging. The golden rays on the water turned black as the day was battered to death by storm clouds.


    Esma felt an instinctive terror. Now it was her. No longer third person. She was now in the body of a child walking in the woods with an armload of kindling. She hears angry screams coming from behind her. She tries to run and stumbles, trying to gather the sticks gathered to stave off the winter chill. She knows instinctively with a ��God��s eye view�� into a life that isn��t hers. This child is an orphan, living with siblings whose parents died of a sickness in the spring. She feels the anguish and panic of this girl. Trying to fend off starvation for her siblings, walking deep into the heart of the forrest with bleeding feet and frozen hands. Shivering of her spine and legs cramping with exhaustion.


    These children managed to survive on roots, fruit and berries but had gained attention of a howling mob of craven blood letters who were now just over the last bramble of trees. Running with tiny legs she feels wolves surrounding her, maybe not wolves but beasts only a few generations from the packs of the forrest. One black set of gnashing teeth nips the back of her leg, Another goes for her neck and misses. She smells the odor of hot breath and matted fur, sour with rotting blood. Finding her tendon true, a hound rips into the back of her calf. Another rips into the front of her knee, spinning her around. She recognizes faces from town, the Mayor, the Money Lender, the Brick Layer, the Midwives. She even remembers the names Pricilla, Diana and Milagros.


    Esma turns around and shrieks to see the hostile eyes of the pack of screaming town��s people and hunters of a lost age of some dark time in eastern Europe. Their eyes reflect a strange whitish pink light, almost as if they are glowing embers seen through stained glass. She forgets the wolf dogs and now is paralyzed in horror as the raving maniacs running down the path at her. They are hurling curses, hisses, accusations. Thousands of years of animosity, women and men, hair white as the snow that has started to fall. Hands raised with farm tools whose blades reveal sharp polished edges on rusted hay-forks, awls, axes and scythes. She feels in her heart innocent of what ever ravings this mob is screaming about.


    As they descend on her she feels hundreds of voices of martyrs cry out from her throat. Languages the world has forgotten for centuries, pleas and cries for mercy. She feels stabbing like stings of bees. Hot alerts of anguish, she feels organs being punctured she doesn��t know the names of. She tries to fend off pummeling stabs and slices from every direction. She can feel metal moving the bones in her hand aside. She feels harsh slaps and sharp pummeling on her face and skull. Her vision becomes like music made out of color, each strike of pins and daggers paints a rainbow of suffering in her field of view.


    She feels every thing slow down. She feels the pack of dogs twist her ankle out of its socket and with a pop, they tear her leg off and begin fighting over it in the shadows. The stabbing has stopped but a new terror comes as sees grubby hands and unclean teeth over her neck and chest. Fetid breath lashing the air from her nose and mouth, suffocating her. She feels a pang of pride has she feels them kicking and stomping on her with muddy feet smelling of horse manure, putrid dog droppings and rancid fungal odor on bare soles with long hawkish toe nails, blisters and open sores.


    Esma hears some incantation in a hateful language of snarls and grunts. Old men and women with pale blue eyes, almost grey and skin like frost search her clothing for any thing of value. She feels so cold as hot rancid breath steams over her neck. She feels her spirit rising, above this scene of butchery she curses these human pigs, swarming over her blood like giant pregnant cockroaches. She sees golden cups and a cloth unfurled with ceremonial candle sticks. Incantations last into the night as she watches her body disassembled like a calf in a slaughterhouse. Even from the spiritual realm she can feel axes biting into her bones. Nothing but her head and spine and some fingers are left for the hounds. She sees an old woman put her head in a sack, eye lids still fluttering with the fading spark of life.


    Esma awakens at dawn, Barstowe carries her into her dead Mother��s bed chamber. Her Mother has been vivisected, torn open as if by wild animals. Little more than a cherub-like face with sightless white eyes, mouth curled in youthful lust, yawning ribs emptied by pawing fiends. Legs still plump but not connected to anything, sprawled at unnatural angles, discarded by ravenous butchers. Barstowe in a mirthful tone declares. ��You belong to me, your mother must stay on these shores. But you will be tutored and raised as my daughter. We sail at sunset. Say your goodbyes�� They will come for you.��


    Esma gasps as the windowsill is filled with unblinking golden eyes, glowing in the long shadows of dawn like candles on an alter. She blinks once, twice and hears the wings of owls taking flight. She is alone and her heart will never be unbroken after this night in the crypts. She is full of secrets, her hands clenched so tight she has broken her thumb. Her mother��s sightless eyes still hold tears for what was. Her hair was freshly bleached, she must have been looking forward to their future, perhaps sailing to the New World.

 Chapter 24. Fall of The Last Temple of Ashtoreth II

    Surrounded by carved and maliciously strewn bodies of the worshippers, Ashtoreth and Mercury stand face to face. Ashtoreth says, ��My, how the mighty has fallen. Do you have no memory of who you were before Mercury?�� No response. She begins again, ��Once you were the protector of the helpless, finder of the lost, knower of things unseen. That armor was fashioned for you in the heart of a star. Do you remember?��


    The Empty vessel before her does not, but somewhere in some dreamless sleep, The True Mercury does hear and understand. He is in a deep place, at the center of the Earth. A place of great heat and darkness. Pools of red magma and harsh smoke burn his eyes.


    The True Mercury remembers a time before, when he Persephone and Solomon were here. He just wanted to help them get free, but he didn��t know what he was giving up. He sent Solomon into the world to spark Demeter on a quest of rescue. It was foolish. He knew Sorsos is a trickster, a shape shifter but he was mortally wounded so he gave him the Armor of the Fallen Star.


    For a second the inner fire behind the mask of the Black Knight wavers, goes out. Artemis smiles and in and instant strikes down Mercury��s corpse in his Haunted Armor revealing the craven Giant King: Sorsos the Sorcerer. Now laid plain in his own Deathly form, a Corpse wearing a crown, a scarlet cloak a gold chalice. But this is a ruse.


    Ashtoreth has seen these Objects of Power in the hands of another, an ally and a radiant soul now enshrined with the inner guidance of ancient Demeter who sacrificed her self. Solomon was never one to not bluff and bluster. Solomon The Sorcerer says, ��At last you have been humbled.�� Ashtoreth responds, ��You, who walked eternity in bliss while the world toiled in blight. You who said, ��You are above the Heavens and the Lord of Hosts.�� Your mediocre schemes are not even worth contempt, the cheap solo minded corruption of the morally weak, ethically sterile and spiritually destitute.�� Solomon hisses and lunges only to be sliced across the torso without effort by Ashtoreth.


    This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    Ashtoreth smiles, ��Your ��Lord of Hosts�� is a mediocre criminal. An imposter and insolent child. Trying to burn the world alive in a tantrum. Over what? Spite? Jealousy? Some perceived slight? Myopic self obsession is so transparent its comical, as if there is some grand design behind selfish pursuit of power and riches with no grand plan for the music of the universe or the magic of the celestial order. Truly an unworthy God to rule even a rock or a field, maybe he would be at home in a toilet like your intolerant Talmud and the perversity of war profiteers dressing up as political figures of peace. You can��t even be honest about the blood thirst of your Demonic God.��


    Ashtoreth continues with spears in the eyes from Solomon. ��Aries serves the false creator, The Demiurge. An imposter for the primal energy of the universe, bastardized by a parasitic wasp with no sense of shame or duty to the devoted slaves the cult of Yaldabaoth. The Demiurge of genocide and inflicted suffering. Feeding on the offerings of your betters. The God of Israel is an imposter, a villain of the lowest kind. Aries and his cult of demon worship will end today.�� Ashtoreth has never stopped to consider if the generations Persephone spent in the underworld could have soured her to the teachings of the old ways. If she didn��t secretly enjoy the perversity of Aries subjugation. The idea she would conspire to defeat her own mother, starting a chain reaction that would betray the Goddesses into oblivion, their wombs made barren and harsh winters from which the crops never recover, long summers of blight and drought would become normal as she drifts farther into her negative manifestation Hecate of Lamashtu��s ��Night Tribes,�� a forgotten Goddess of infant sacrifice and mirror to ��Yahova the Yaldabaoth�� once known as Aries.


    Solomon laughs, he says ��I will rid this world of the Albigensian Gnosis, Mystics and all inferior Gods. Prostitute temples will burn, your children sold as slaves. Your men sacrificed in wars with allies turned to our cause. We will deplete you by proxy. Watching your people wither under weak leaders and minstrel play politics, chasing money and never stopping to question why things are the way they are. I will smash your memory, remove your temples and put your fertile lands to the torch. Salting your crops and seeding seething locusts into your heartland.�� He turns to dust that swirls into nothing. In the sky the apparition of a great furnace to Moloch. The armies of Baal appear on the horizon, a thundering from the Heavens as a Wild Hunt crests the clouds. Hundreds of Thousands of Deathless Warriors, Ghosts, Animal Spirits, Centuries of the Fallen Warriors, come roaring down from the stormy sky.

 Chapter 25. The Aria of Aries III

    Dorotea and Ozma walk amongst the thousand Ruined Temples of Gods persecuted by the Armies of Aries. Temples to Astarte, Artemis, Hermes, Demeter, Isis, Thoth, Dionysus, Ra, Osiris, Hecate and hundreds of lesser known and Older Cults who went extinct before the looters of the Sanhedrin arrived.


    Dorothea feels sad for so many great works for art smashed, stones carried away to built other cultures temples, adherents burned alive or buried under fallen stone. Every temple has the same sad story, mothers and daughters violated and lying mummified in their lands monuments, to forever be an effigy of oppression of the Goddesses.


    Ozma asks about the individual Gods and Goddesses. Dorotea is too moved by the loss of millennia of magic and life. Inside her Demeter promised to guide her, but instead of advice or a feeling of certainty and confidence. She is feeling someone else��s memories and pain. The loss of friends over generations. The feeling the world is sliding into a backwards Epoch, some kind of regression that she can��t quite understand. Dorotea feels more and more like a debt is owed.


    A few drops of rain start falling, turning into a spattering of large drops hitting erratically as the thunder from the distance draws slowly near. Dorotea feels less and less like a young girl lost on strange horizons, and more like a feminine manifestation of rage. A Goddess of a rare moment in history where there was justice and order according to nature.


    Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.


    With out seeing or knowing what she was doing she was manifesting a crystal dagger and cutting her hand over and over. Not noticing her hands torn to ribbons and looking like a Stigmata, Dorotea starts walking towards the Pyramid of Aries, until she breaks into a run. As Sicari and Sanhedrin notice her she is totally possessed by the single minded quest for vengeance of a goddess of war.


    Unhesitatingly dodging heavy attacks of Aries soldiers like a dance, stepping aside with little effort and plunging her Knife of Crystal into hearts, eyes, lungs. Leaving horrific Monstrosities whimpering and gasping in pools of blood. Running up the Pyramid now full speed she is unseen by those inside. Ozma unsure but not wanting to be alone is not far behind. Cresting the top Dorotea sees Slaves cowering in corners of great rooms. Ignoring them she looks for Aries or some sign, some clue to lead her to ending this war before it begins.


    Dorotea and Ozma are startled to see the Soul of Mercury floating in the Ether. A bluish orb floats around the apartments of Aries. Like a white hot ball of plasma rapidly cooling and flashing hot again, inside is the melting spirit of Mercury going from different stages of life. As a Youth, as a Warrior, as an Old Man, as the Black Knight. Ozma walks up and touches the orb, her eyes spark with electricity and she faints and ceases to exist.


    Dorotea alone stalks the halls of the Temple of Aries, she finds Mars corpse, totally mutilated and assaulted. Dorotea hears a strange sound, coming from an adjacent chamber hall. Beyond veils, she spies Aries gazing into a black mirror. Leaping onto his neck has he opens a portal and steps through, her knife plunging deep into his throat as they both disappear into the Mirror. In the last moment before crashing into oblivion Dorotea say a glimpse of something so fleeting she is not sure she really saw it or its significance. Persephone was in the Pyramid of Baal, and her smile had a glare of maliciousness of any thing but an ally.

 Chapter 26. The day of the Lion Tamer, The Dying Clown and the Soldaderas Part V

    The Gypsy Esma is covered in dust and plaster, totally white and in shock. Dorotea has awakened and is shaking, screaming, ��Mother, can you hear me? Its Orinthia! I was in a strange world of Ghosts and then I woke up.�� Esma is confused, seeing Dorotea and Orinthia inhabit the same face. Its uncanny, there are two souls there totally visible and plain to see.


    Xavier and Carmen were blasted through the wall, and are somewhere in the darkness. Rosita is walking over the rubble, eyes wide but unseeing. She is covered in bite marks on her neck and body, her once cinnamon skin is now pale as the moon. Her hair has gone white, her teeth long, protruding from her mouth and emoting a blood thirst as she comes to them and slowly focuses on the possessed Dorotea and Esma.


    In the night Carolota is laying amongst rubble. She tries to get off the ground but her head is bleeding into her eyes. She hears whistles and war cries. She sees the flag of the Huerta Government faction opposed to Villa.


    She tries to find a weapon, all she can manage are large splinters of exploded crates about a foot long. She remembers hearing something about a story, involving vampires being killed with wooden stakes. A fortunate thing to need in a field of shattered wood and bloodthirsty Ghouls and Vampires.


    Maritza and the remaining Soldaderas dug in and made barriers to hide behind. Laying low and holding their fire. In the tumult of chaos, the smoke, the fires, cries of the dying, there is opportunity to stand back to watch for an opportune moment to strike.


    The Circus freaks and Clowns do not see Huerta as a savior so they begin firing wildly, hurling bottles of accelerants into the Huerta line. The Huerta force are not eager to massacre the disoriented Carnies. There is a tolerance depleting for rogue bullets and burning horses stamping their own riders. With in a minute there will be a bloodbath.


    Esma and Dorotea, now personified by her dead daughter Orinthia��s spirit scramble out of the blown up train. As they crawl into the dark, they see Rosita has not moved. Following them with her dead eyes. As she takes a step over the debris carefully to not violate her bare feet with any thing sharp, Xavier and Carmen tackle her.


    Instantly she turns into a wild animal, clawing, gnashing teeth and trying to overpower them. She is weak, being unfed she is merely a risen corpse with some extra hunger and night vision but no superhuman strength. Something in her goes dormant. She stops fighting as they tie her hands and feet securely.


    The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    Carolota watches a group of glowing eyes come out of the dark swirling smoke. Ghouls and Barstowe��s inner circle of undead, appear from the darkness and ravage the Huerta line from the sides.


    Against the combat whole human forms are reduced to pulsating meat by bullets and fangs. The Soldaderas leap up with a mighty war cry smashing into the middle of the violence with a barbarity even Hungry Ghosts and Risen Corpses feeding on blood cannot match, it is a chaos of spurting scarlet arterial spray and dull thuds of rusty farm tools hacking necks of long dead Ghouls.


    Over the horizon to the south, a fierce war cry as hundreds of horsemen come crashing into the battle. Running over everything standing from the flank. General Emiliano Zapata and Ambrose Bierce lead a cavalry running at full speed, bashing and breaking the Barstowe ghouls down, crippling the clowns and running the bystanders into the ground.


    Esma and Dorotea join with Xavier and Carmen. Now that Rosita is safe, Xavier tells the girls to start the train, and he will go to find Carolota. Xavier makes a torch and staying low heads towards the battle to find Carolota. When he does she is having no trouble dispatching ghouls with stakes made from broken crates.


    Xavier feels so much love her her at his moment. Of all the possible outcomes she is the apex predator in a killing frenzy. Gathering all the Stakes they can carry, they dash back to the Steam Engine which is now moving in time to see Barstowe has found them. Unfazed by his broken skull he is wearing his top hat and seizing in to strike Dorotea, Esma and Carmen to retrieve Rosa.


    Carolota covered in blood and gore runs from the front, Barstowe turns and grasps her by the neck with out looking, just as Xavier coming from behind it about to strike he hears the Soldaderas cheering.


    Rushing fast from the fields beyond is Pancho Villa, riding an actual Chariot pulled by 6 hungry Lions that smashes into the battle with the Undead Circus Vampires, Clowns and Freaks who are not undead, but enthralled alive to the evil Sorcerers cause.


    Barstowe in awe doesn��t turn to stop Xavier from impaling his chest with a foot and a half long stake. Carolota��s throat released, she doesn��t skip a beat and repeatedly stabs Barstowe in the eyes and neck with her stake.


    Ozma in Dorotea��s body watches as her mother Esma joins into picking up several Stakes and jabbing them into Barstowe��s back as he turned to confront Xavier. Barstowe is impaled by 7 or 8 stakes in his head, neck and chest. He does not fall. With a horrific snarl he dashes into the night.


    In the battle between the living and the undead, the Soldaderas have backed off after their long and drawn out fight they catch their breath in the weeds. Villas force is making short work of the battered Carnies, Vampires, Freaks, Hungry Ghosts.


    The Steam Engine now catching speed moves West into the sunrise. Everyone aboard has a chance to catch their breath and appraise their situation. Barstowe has been seemingly mortally wounded, but there are also his Three Sages likely to find some close by haven to crawl beneath the earth.


    Looking back the tunnels beneath the Bigtop are roaring with fire from bellow. Just then Carolota and Carmen look at each other and say in unison, ��Pepito!�� The girls don��t bother with explanation and dive from the moving Train, running back to the battle.


    Xavier says to Esma, ��Slow the train down safely and wait for us to return.�� He takes a breath to steady his nerves and then leaps onto the grass as it goes rushing by, tumbling like a doll in the morning light.

 Unnumbered Chapter: The Sacrificial King

    Sometime before the dawn of the Bronze Age there was a sacred grove where young men wandered to meet the nymphs of legend. If he was lucky, or unlucky they would bring him to a shrine on the shore of lake Nemi, called ��Diana��s Mirror.�� If he could get a sacred branch from a guarded tree he could be ��King for a Day��. Having his pick of one or all of the nymphs, spending his day feasting and at some point he would be surprised with a sword in the ribs.


    This occasion was not a title the adept would desire. This is where the followers of the Goddess would lure men to their doom with promises of sex and wine. Many a holiday was punctuated by the ceremonial death of these chosen ones. The day would be ecstatic with dance, esoteric plays to reenact the great acts of the Goddess and end with blood to satisfy the temple once more for another year of plentiful crops, bounty of the hunt in local forests and the ability of the seers to continue their magic through the seasons.


    An occasion such as this is where the mad child Mithras was turned from a normal human, to the bane of the Goddess cults existence. At least in the local tradition, farther east Mithras has an older tradition much different.


    Meeting a drunken Satyr beside a ruined temple. Mithras was looking for a place to sleep. He did not know he would be asked to give up certain safety and rest for the marathon of endless pain that is being king. While every insecure fool and down on his luck beggar seeks to whip the slaves into a murderous frenzy.


    The Satyr advises against making camp in this place as it is a haven for wolves and Harpies who come down from the hills in search of lone travelers. He suggests a trip to the temple of the Goddess Diana beside mirrored lake of Nemi. This was the time of the year of a fortuitous festival for the youth to attend. Needing little cajoling, Mithras follows to his doom.


    If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    Mithras enters the glade of the Golden Bough, he has been told to follow a pair of doves to guide the way by the helpful Satyr that climbing this beautiful tree and claiming the innermost branches his destiny. He welcomes the supple bodies of the nymphs and faithful women in the Temple of Diana, known as Aphrodite elsewhere along the silk road to the east from whence he came. The Goddess of love and passion, fertile honey and bountiful milk.


    Watching from the shadows with tired darting eyes and heavy exhausted arms hold a sword, apprehensive and wary but called forth to fight. Mithras is quick, scrambling up the massive tree like a gazelle in mid stride. He vaguely remembers a story like this in the Aeneid. Reaching out to grasp his prize he loses his footing, tumbling down and down into the underworld. He is beset on by the former champion while he is unarmed, save for a splendid twig that will not stop a sword from piercing his eyelids.


    Mithras chooses the certain path, he dashes away. Into the depths, into the sleepy arms of the underworld, through the gate of eternity to Elysian Fields. He will not have rest but constant struggle. For each kiss and embrace in the bosom of love, he will be hunted and cut down over and over again. While mortals sleep in soft beds, his bed will be decaying leaves. While you sleep with a wife at night, he sleeps with a knife ready to bound into flight. He is as the duckling afraid of the hawk, and the turtle must always guard against the hungry fish, the oryx from the lion and rabbit ever watchful for the fox.


    Rex Nemorensis is a lonely watch, crippling the young mans bones brittle, drying his legs to husks, making every act of love hurried for fear of a knife in the back or a sword in the throat. He will wander the world trying to avoid this watch but every time he thinks of the Goddesses it seems like the wild hunt is just on the horizon. Sounds of ghostly laughter and perilous new rivals became his legacy. He too was considered a God, Mithras long forgot his own mysteries of the Triumphant killing of the hellish Bull, the adepts of a school devoted to his wisdom. If he advised the lone traveler on the slopes of the Alban Hills who hears about the rite to become the orgiastic ��Priest of Nemi, Sacrifical King�� he would say�� ��Run while there is still no-one to chase you.��

 Chapter 27. Fall of the Last Temple of Ashtoreth III

    A crack comes from the stratosphere as Aries appears with Dorotea on his back jamming a knife into his neck and shoulders with little effect. With little effort Aries pulls Dorotea from his neck and tosses her away to fall to her death. In this moment Persephone��s long held secret becomes apparent. She has betrayed them, through some unknown mechanizations and ritual, she weakened the Mother Goddesses enough for this intrusion to come at all, much less uncontested.


    Dorotea panics as she falls to Earth, barely conscious from lack of air and gravitational forces beyond what is safe for a human being. She cries for help from any of the Goddesses and Gods she met, Demeter, Ashtoreth, Artemis, Persephone, Hermes, Mercury.


    Persephone has no time for this insolent little girl, changing into the manifestation of Hecate. She calls forth the infernal name of her true master. The one she called to from the underworld to save her. The slithering unknown, the serpent in the babes cradle, the dragon beside the basement stairs, the Mother of all nightmares and terror. Lamashtu, the Mesopotamian curse upon all mothers and daughters.


    The Armor of the Black Knight rattles, engulfed in blue flame. Hearing the call. The bones of Mercury snap together inside his armor and shoots into the air breaking the sound barrier. In an instant Mercury, the Black Knight has caught Dorotea. Dorotea gasps at the Atrocity that has come to the once serene Temple of Ashtoreth.


    Where once were meadows and ponds in an eternal dawn light, flowers going on forever. Now there are blackened earth, burning pits of bodies, worshippers burned alive in their center of worship and Ashtoreth holding off a great Army of blasphemous creatures of the grave.


    Hermes and Artemis arrive just in time to see Mercury wisk Dorotea down safely. Dorotea on her hands and knees, struggling to not be sick from vertigo tries to smile in greeting but spits up a yellow spew of bile. Hermes offers her a silk napkin, while Artemis begins the work of death. Striking down malevolent Shades of Aries ghostly Army in the sky.


    Ashtoreth in a trance is invoking super heated purple gouts of plasma from her finger tips, from her eyes steaming rays of starlight vaporize large swaths of Monsters. It makes little difference as endless hordes of undead Warriors pour from behind the sunrise down dark storm clouds to wage war on the Goddess.


    Dorotea remembers her Helmet, Cloak, Sword and Rifle from the first day in the Dead Lands. Retrieving them from her carts, kept safely beside the manger of the Temple. Now Dorotea is able to take shots at the swooping Monstrosities.


    Persephone has taken a bizarre form, her head a crown of candles and her hands and feet withered black with gangrene to the point of wrapped black bones resembling hooves. Odd spaced eyes of an owl open on her face and breast. The rifle knocked her down, but undeterred she continues to struggle to hit her targets. Hermes and Mercury take to the sky on angelic wings to rip Ghouls and Ghosts asunder. Mercury welds the Golden Sword of Dorotea, and Hermes a great scythe.


    This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work.


    Aries swings down on a great chariot to plunge directly into Ashtoreth. He is quickly smited on the snout, sending his ghostly steeds into a pile before him. With a high pitched scream comes The mad-child Mithras lunges towards Artemis, who deftly slaps him to the point of tears. Persephone has taken a bizarre form, her head a crown of candles and her feet withered black with gangrene to the point of wrapped black bones resembling hooves. Odd spaced eyes of an owl open on her face and breast. Scratches of incantations bleed in wounds from her arms and stomach.


    Artemis snatches Mithras by his cloak as he tries to flee, climbing on his chest and pounding him about the face with punishing blows of fist and elbow. Breaking his nose, swelling his eyes and mouth. Reducing the boy to sniffling tears and choking on his teeth.


    Persephone shocks every one and plunges a burning dagger into the back and ribs of Artemis over and over until they are both is consumed in fire. Persephone has betrayed them.


    Aries recovering rises to hurl lightning at Ashtoreth, seeing the state of Mithras charges forward to smash Artemis in the side of the head. Freeing Mithras to manifest his mythic form of Ahriman, The Lion headed Angel of Wrath. Aries looks down to see a long piece of wood from his Chariot, going in his lowest rib and coming out the opposite side of his back near the shoulder blade. He gasps to breathe.


    Dorotea feeling power inside her say, ��Draw from my power, I call on Demeter to come forth.�� Dorotea closes her eyes and from her form draws forth the burning fire of Demeter. In the persona of Demeter, Dorotea rises into the sky. Smashing into hordes of Monstrosities. Leaving pieces of broken and burning bodies in her wake.


    The evil sorcerer Sorsos has slinked in behind the battle, dashing an Obsidian Dagger into the back of the Goddess Ashtoreth with a fatal blow. With stab after stab the power of Ashtoreth fades, she has over exerted her self. This moment where her attention of elsewhere the Queen of Heaven is spewing blood from a collapsed lung. Gods like mortals have specific weaknesses in their physiology and due to specific weapons. This was the perfect storm to kill a god.


    Hermes sees this and rushes to confront Sorsos. Hermes has found his memory of his time manipulated into the terror of these lands. He remembers the purges and massacres. There is a deep debt of vengeance to be settled. The once fabled wise Solomon as Sorsos The Damned, the great corpse King. Nearly eight feet tall, whose skin is the color of burned paper and wears the scarlet robes and crown of an ancient king.


    He was once a wise and renowned king. He was a great wizard and using dark arts raised and army of demons to serve him. This darkened his soul, and upon death he became an immortal tyrant. Creating human sacrifice cult after the practice had been outlawed for decades by the Israelites. Sorsos enthralled the ��Angel of Death�� Hermes into a human form. Making him the ��Albino General�� Hooded Executioner of the Sanhedrin��s secret police and order of Assassins.


    Hermes comes flying from behind with great fiery sword. Sorsos easily turns and with hands conjuring the power of the universe grasps the sword with an ironlike grip. Wrenching it from Hermes grasp. Hermes kicks Solomon in the chest. Pulling his sword back, they lock into a fight like two bulls. Neither stronger or faster they are at an impasse. Sorsos glass eyes glow with a spectral fire, weakening the soul of Hermes who has no eye lids or ability to break the magics sway.


    With the great violent uproar of lightning, whirlwinds and firestorm sweeping over the surrounding hills, there is a moment when all eyes were averted and with deft accuracy Persephone as Hecate plunges the killing blow into beautiful ��Queen of Heaven,�� Ashtoreth. Ending the Reign of one so pure and all knowing, she had watched ice ages end and ages of humanity rise and fall from the Neolithic to today. The oldest fertility Goddess does not even fight or question the logic. She is killed with a knowing smile and confident eyes.


    Dorotea slinking behind Hermes picks up a piece of brick masonry, she doesn��t know why she is doing it. This is not the influence of Demeter or any benevolent spirit. She feels an acrid stink in her mouth, as if a malevolent spirit is breathing out as she breathes in. Smelling of sulphur, onions and rotting meat. She raises her arms above her head and in horror smashes the skull of Hermes, who does not die but looks at her questioningly.

 Unnumbered Chapter: Persephone Stolen Away To The Underworld

    There is a story from when world was young. The daughter of a Goddess was so beautiful even the spirits of the underworld desired her. One day in the end of summer she was picking flowers in the valley of Nysa and was set upon by spirits from bellow.


    She was taken away from the world of mortals and in grief her mother no longer brought the spring and the world faded unto a long dry autumn and then settled in eternal winter.


    In this time frozen ground caused years of suffering while crops and fields of grain died, orchards withered and streams ran dry as sunlight in the mountains no longer melted the ice. Whole peoples were removed from the Earth leaving only empty villages and temples.


    Demeter calling the closest friends of Persephone, the Sirens and the Muses to go out into the planes of existence to seek out their true friend. They all came back empty handed and in a rage Demeter cursed them to walk the Earth until she could be found, eating only of lost travelers and trapped dreamers in the waking nightmares of comas and shock.


    The world suffered in this time of grief. Pastoral meadows and verdant glades turned to ash and rock. There is no song in the air or hopeful silver lining to storm clouds. There was a hunger and starvation that showed in malnourished bears and wildcats.


    Where flowers and streams effortlessly brought honey bees, lady bugs and happy sheep. Now there is parasitic wasps, cordyceps fungus rotting the minds of insects and men.


    For our lost Persephone, there was no Justice. For Persephone she grew to hate her old life and every one in it. She started to love the romance of death, the poetry in loss. She felt a new power in spite, hate and loathing.


    She was forever despondent. Wife of a predator ��False God.�� She was created as a virginal love Goddess who was not loved or in love. She was a trophy on a shelf, ignored and in a sick way she even fantasized about abuse or lustful attention as she grew old as a prisoner.


    This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.


    Persephone was doomed to lay in wait for the rare attention she was afforded. Other than her ability to gain her own agency there was no hope of escape. What should a God of Spring and meadows do in a land she was unequipped for? She studied magic, the occult and esoteric. Changing her manifestation from a young nymph of lost youth to a dark soul lying in wait.


    Demeter cried for help from the old Gods and none were willing to intercede. This is how the mystery cult of Eleusis came about. The wailing mothers of missing daughters prayed to Demeter and her daughter Persephone. Cycles of life and death led to centuries of forgetfulness.


    Her cult, and that of her mother was growing stale in the world. The myth of her torment and desire for rescue forgotten. But a new name arose in the world. Hecate, Goddess of night, revenge, murder and foul plots.


    When Persephone returned her manifestation was not the idyllic child of flowers in bloom and raising the wine of summer. She had learned to enjoy her torment and without remorse she planned the day of her vengeance on all who failed her.


    She does not blame Aries who is known as ��Yahovah the Yaldabaoth�� who has enthralled reality into a monstrous layer upon layer of dimensions of strife, endless war and recreational abuse for pleasure of all lifeforms that have ever lived before and will ever live again.


    There is a Satanic lust in this world for suffering. The wounded go on to thrive on wounding others. Former slaves relish reliving the torment visited upon them in the wailing eyes of those they go on to victimize. People��s marked for massacre and ethnic cleansing are empowered to do the same to their neighbors.


    This is the legacy of the old evil spirit, demonic madness that roils under the surface of nicety and platitudes, the possession that comes from those who suffered and desire nothing more than to stamp the light of joy out of others in the world.


    Persephone blames those who claim to be good and use the cloth of religion to fuel their own selfish appetites. She blames the Goddesses who claim such divine motives, who abandoned her to centuries of misery in a frigid tomb of aching despair, abject suffering and what could have been if she had come of age in the ancient morning light at the dawn of the world. Instead she wallowed in torment, terror and lamentations.


    Endless Lament in the belly of Hades brings forth unknown magic in the soul of the innocent who has been fed a diet of eternal ugliness. Where beautiful songs and incantations of love once lived, now there is something else. A festering like maggots in the eyes of a starving infant. Who cries for what it cannot describe or foresee, just an instinctive knowledge something, somewhere is being eaten away like eyes of a child infested by botflies and parasitic wasps. Nurtured on sour milk of a starving mother whose love has long been dormant in her own yarning for the release of death.


    Cold flesh kept alive only by night terrors and fever dreams. Where pinching the flesh and puncturing the days with open wounds is better than feeling nothing and forgetting. Hope has an expiration date when the world is laughing and loving while you fester and rot during stolen youth.

 Chapter 28. Persecution of Pepito “The Killer” Elephant

    Xavier cannot keep up with Carolota and Carmen who have already disappeared into the chaos of the burning Circus. Engulfed in a the end of a knock down, drag out fight. Huerta��s Government Marines, The Carnival Freaks and Monsters, and the Pancho Villa Northern Army are pummeling each other in a brawl of brutal stabbing, stomping and slashing each other with no defined front line. Unnatural Spirits having fled the scene, leaving startled Soldiers and Soldaderas of both sides huddling with Rosaries, consulting Virgin Mary in hushed prayers. Clowns and Freaks of uncommon strength are wrestling down Soldiers.


    On the ground dying men cringe in horror while bayonetted over and over, any thing of value is secreted away from Revolutionary forces already pouring back into obscurity on stolen horses and wagons of the Barstowe European Circus. Looking beyond, Xavier sees the flooded town of Bagdad Beach. It was a major port until hurricanes 20 years before knocked down many of the wood structures. Leaving mostly the ornate neoclassical buildings around the square, now growing forests of trees from roofs and awnings giving the impression of pillars and statued edifices supporting tropical islands. This is what the fall of the Roman empire must have looked like as Wonders of the World were reclaimed by nature. Venturing closer Xavier feels a gothic quality of the place. Marble and fine crafted stone lie half submerged in green algae.


    Where once great wealth from being the only international port not blockaded during Civil war to trade with Confederate States of America. Vast funds once poured in building a replica of a great European cities of marble like Vienna or Prague. The decades that followed led to the local denizens to deteriorate from well educated boat captains and travelers, to smugglers, cut throats and whores too riddled with syphilis to turn an honest trade in larger cities. The fabulous architecture and abandoned state drew artists to settle from Europe. That led the locals to flee when it was reveled these eccentrics were actually a clandestine Leper colony. By the time the buildings sank in the mud there were few there to complain. That��s when Barstowe made it��s ��sunken grandeur�� into his hide out from the light of the world above.


    Wading into deep water Xavier yells for his Sisters. Disturbing crows and there is silence. The sound of waves crashing in the distance betrays an ocean tide entering somewhere within. But even in day light Xavier just wants to run the other way. He swims out beyond where he can reach the ground. Never much of a swimmer its all he can do to move at a snails pace and not drown. He hears a commotion as he rounds from rooftops sticking above the marsh. He sees Carolota and Carmen swinging improvised clubs at a number of Government infantry from Huerta��s force, and a Baby Elephant charging at the soldiers who are ready to shoot the poor animal.


    Coming to rest on what must have been a colonial church on a hill. The Soldiers turn their attention to him, drawing guns in his direction. He attempts to smile and edge closer to his sisters. The largest and most aggressive soldier is knocked down from the side by a charging Baby Elephant in the chaos. Xavier and his sisters surge forth to wrestle away the rifles. With out much more encouragement the Government Forces are sent to back towards the battle but with out their boots, uniforms and weapons. The men rush off the opposite way to not be executed as deserters.


    Finally catching a moments peace, Xavier asks ��what in the world�� was going on. Carolota explains, ��Pepito, our friend, the Elephant helped us escape captivity by the owner of the Circus, he had us chained up in a cellar, this Baby came swimming in from the other side and helped us break down the door. In the battle he ran away, we had to find him so none of the soldiers would shoot him for food or stop him from being injured by the canons. When we returned the Pendejo��s were chasing him trying to eat him. So we chased after. I guess Pepito broke the leg of President Huerta��s brother in-law who was Commander.��


    Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators!


    Laughing Xavier stroked Pepito��s head and said, ��Lets get back to Dorotea and Rosita. If Rosita was bitten by one of them, she will die in direct sunlight. I hope the Gypsy woman covered her up with blankets.�� Wading out of the flooded town and right into the hands of the Huerta Government Forces. They are outmatched and outgunned. The soldiers try to shoot Pepito right away but both Carolota and Carmen dive in front of him, pleading for mercy.


    The Commander of the Huerta forces, ��lvaro Obreg��n demands a trial. Made to seem far more lenient than he is feeling with his broken leg up on a bread cart when he sees the disapproving glare of 30 of Pancho Villa��s Soldaderas, who make an instant decision on the side of the Defense and the man himself. General Villa and dozens of his most seasoned killers join the conversation. Commander ��lvaro Obreg��n who was already missing an arm from an earlier battle is not feeling confident about the nearly equal odds of his forces and Villa��s now face to face.


    Seeing an opportunity to diffuse a close range gunfight offers to make General Villa the honorary Judge and offers his finest Cognac to drink during the proceedings. Witnesses called are the Soldiers who have been stripped of their uniforms by Xavier and the sisters. Pleading their case Villa is largely engaged in his own conversations with Commander Obreg��n, but pausing to laugh at any hint of Huerta��s forces being humiliated by his own.


    Carolota and Carmen recite their own story of Dorotea, the Elephant living in the Villa camp and then coming to their rescue and the fact their sister was currently injured and the Baby Elephant was needed to help bring her to safety. That is all Villa needed to hear. He says in English, ��Regretfully I must err on the side of my loyal friend and compatriot, ��General Peptio Hidalgo Galia��, having long suffered indentured servitude and abuse. Risked his life in valiant displays of courage has come to rise as the mascot of our division of Soldaderas. To smooth things over i am sure that our lovely Soldaderas can make your surrender and retreat back to Mexico City more comfortable.��


    Amid cheers and rifles firing in the air of the thrilled Soldaderas, Pancho offers his glass in cheers. A gloomy expression of Commander Obreg��n cracks as he is forced to smile. Pancho whispers to Maritza, ��Make nice with them, march them down the road and strip their corpses. Take Comandante Obreg��n Hostage.�� Commander Obreg��n continues smiling as Soldadera��s stroke his head and gain his confidence.


    Hours earlier. Esma, Dorotea and Rosita attempt to sleep but an unnerving sound begins to scare Esma. Its a sound of scratching, while at the same time hearing a melody play slowly and on a broken sounding music box. Looking up, Esma is petrified to see all the Dead Girls from the Circus are surrounding the train. Wearing black hoods and staring with glowing eyes.


    Xavier and company, returning down the train tracks they feel good to see the Engine. There is also a disheartening silence. The train looks as if it was picked up off the track and landed wrong. Listing at an angle that moves Xavier and the Sisters to run towards the Steam Engine to discover its empty save for pools of blood and signs of conflict.


    Shell casings and bullet holes fill the interior. There is still gun smoke in the air. This must have happened just before they came in eye sight. Finding a spyglass in the cabin, Xavier searches the horizon. Around the ocean gleaming water and rich gold sand are clearly not where they went. Looking the opposite way he sees smoking farms and fields of dead live stock.


    A chill runs down his spine as he realizes that while they were pleading for ��General Pepito�� that Dorotea, Rosita and Esma were taken again by Barstowe��s Cult. Beside the town of Bagdad is a dark swamp, out there beyond the ruins are more colonial Spanish missions and churches. He remembers stories of the Witches who lived there, he also remembers people saying his Mother��s side was connected to them somehow.


    Its around 3 o��clock when Xavier and the Sisters make their return down the train tracks to find Dorotea and Rosa. The Sun casting long shadows, 3 hours at the most and they will be in pitch blackness, allowing Barstowe and his creatures of the night to come out in full force. He must burn them where they sleep. If they are lucky they can explain the most unlikely part of their story to General Villa and drive the devils out into the night with Pancho��s Lion Chariot at the front of the fight.

 Chapter 29. The Witches Song

    Xavier runs along the train tracks back to Bagdad Beach. On the horizon the fighting looks like it died down. Only the sound of screaming and metal bending give away the fading sounds of the dawn battle. Among the bodies in piles Xavier comes across a large stockpile of weapons. The Borrachos seemed to fare the best. Looting the ruins of the Circus.


    Xavier hopes that one of them particular has survived. The drunken priest Padre Tuti Arranga. He was never a bad priest but falling asleep and allowing your parish to burn down in a hurricane, when you were seen yelling and throwing bottles from the bell tower is never a way to stay in business. This and the fact it was a Comanche mission, where many of the wives of the most brutal raiders were housed to keep keep the peace.


    He not only allowed the women the run of the place, to come and go freely, but was rumored to be trading them guns and whiskey in return for safe passage of his parishioners. A heavy transgression worthy of hanging, so Padre Tuti ended up living under bridges and blessing the wounded beside the road in exchange for the dying parties coins and any thing of value in their pockets and saddlebags.


    Xavier looked beyond the Circus camp to the flooded town. On a roof he sees the cowardly priest has skirted the battle all together and has climbed a tree growing from the ruins above the waterline. High above the submerged graveyard masoleums he sways drunkenly with the gentle wind bending the laws of physics. His eyes are red and looks to have been crying, or more likely screaming obscenities in the direction of the battle. Xavier says, ��Padre, I need your help. Can you perform an Exorcism?�� The Priest smiles and replies, ��Every day in this blasted place.��


    As if on que a flock of two angry male Peacocks and five females begin to fight in the branches around him. Amused at first, turns to annoyance and terror at the canny birds peck at his pockets and fingers for a hand out. In the blink of the eye he is laying flat on his back 20 feet bellow his perch. Xavier asks, ��Father, are you hurt?�� The Priest lays contently with eyes closed. ��I think I will lay here a while. Ask me again after dark.��


    Arriving back at the former site of the Barstowe Circus, now rubble and smoldering logs with Padre Tuti. Xavier now needs the help of the most unlikely savior. Pancho Villa��s Northern Army. Xavier allows Carolota and Carmen to do the talking. Villa and his most seasoned killers flood out, crossing them selves and ready to march on hell its self. Villa has taken the presence of Ghouls and Vampires in Mexico as a personal affront.


    In the battle at sunrise somehow he had missed the fact that a third of the hostiles were undead, now he pledges everlasting hostility and belligerence on the half of his, ��Sweet sisters Dorotea and Rosita.�� Who will either be rescued at the point of a sword or avenged.


    Mexico has long been a superstitious country. Stories like this are not myths to many but a practical threat every child and lone traveler on the road at night must contend with. There are always half eaten bodies beside the road as feasts for coyotes. This doesn��t take supernatural interference. But when signs of surgical removal of specific organs such as eyes, the tongue, the spleen, the lungs, the ovaries or brain. There is always a thought that some kind of evil lurks among the reeds, in colonial cemeteries and forgotten swamps.


    Many in the camp know of stories of ��Brujas de la Canci��n,�� who drag children off to be boiled in cauldrons, or bled dry on Satanic alters in moonlight. They fear ghosts of the wrongly executed and clutch their crossed when they must cross by churches and burial grounds. Tonight many of them will join the dead sooner than they had planned.


    Villa although not educated beyond the most basic studies as a child, has a great vocabulary and wisdom of the world and every thing in it. He is self taught in the ways of the streets. He shunned title of President and preferred to continue revolution once the other forced established one of his one time friend and ally Huerta.


    Pancho is a General not out of some esoteric hierarchy, but because if you live as a bandit and head of cutthroats engaged in war for years and you live long enough thats what you become. Pancho is not a crafty man, not manipulative or scheming. He is very loyal and lives by a creed of the streets. If you are loyal to him, he will die beside you, if not�� you will die and become a cautionary tale about having plans and opinions different than his.


    General Villa, on his chariot pulled by a Pride of Lions leads a mass of Horsemen into the swamp. Xavier, Carmen and Carolota climb down from horses. They watch and Pancho and Martiza set the Lions to swim towards the submerged town and graveyard beyond.


    As the sun comes through the trees in majestic rays a brilliant peach colored sunset people flee from the growing shadows and vile entities seeking blood that rise from their subterranean coffins at dusk. Green and stained white buildings lean at odd angles. From the black water poke up blessed Virgin Mary statues, crosses and angels all take on a sinister visage, covered in moss and bird droppings. Eyes seeming to weep black streaks amongst the burials forgotten by centuries past.


    Coming to a ruined gothic church showing signs of fire and violent wind. Inside the roof has fallen in, stained glass windows long gone. At the knave, the floor has fallen into the crypts bellow. The Villaista��s faction makes torches and follow the hungry Lions that seem to intuitively understand friend from foe, and are eager for a fight. Every one of the people seem to pause to look at the dying light once more, kiss a crucifix, saying prayers and checking rifles are fully loaded.


    The Crypts are larger than the town would have led to believe, vaulted ceilings and great distances contained within. The Soldiers fan out in every direction, laughing at the echoes, at the acoustics while they sing Corrido�� into the booming distance of forgotten hallways. The depths of the Tomb answers with laughter of an especially cruel and shrill sort. Soldiers go running with a war cry and the same stimuli give pause to Xavier and his Sisters Carolota and Carmen. They look to each other for reassurance and then to the sound of crickets coming from the entrance.


    From the same direction the soldiers ran, the Lions come running back whimpering. They know this is a bad sign of whats to come. They owe Pancho Villas Northern Army more than to cower at the first hint of dismay.


    Collecting their courage they proceed into the distant recesses of this dank crypt. Lions slink behind them in an unsure gait. Coming to a junction of different paths, they decide that nothing would be worse than separating but Carolota and Carmen think that if each one of them takes 2 Lions they will be able to overcome any lurking foe.


    Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    Sounds of wounded men come hauntingly from within, drawing up feelings of dread from base of the spine. Xavier with an Alpha Male Lion and a Female who seem more interested in each other than fighting run ahead into the dark. Xavier alone cringes each time his foot crunches a leaf or disturbs a husked bramble. He feels itchy, spiderwebs stick to his face and splinters fill his collar and sleeves. Buzzing in his ears driving him mad all the while his heart beating grows thunderous. The dark is so oppressive he imagines red glows and flashes of light he knows are lack of stimuli filling his optic nerve. Transmuting brain enzymes and electrical charges into outlandish hallucinations.


    He hears a hum but can��t tell if it is behind or ahead. Coming to a jumble of bodies he checks for signs of life. There is none. But further down he sees something that makes him feel better. There under an overturned chariot is the General Pancho Villa, wounded from the fall but unmolested by Vampiric interference. As he reaches Pancho, the hum becomes a resounding mantra, invoking poltergeists and crawling things of all kinds to emanate a deeply hostile spiritual presence the farther they travel. Out of torch light, shadow creatures and phantom eyes watch them. Scratching and fluttering of wings follow their footsteps just out of sight.


    Carolota and her two Female Lions have a fast friendship, looking at each other with friendly eyes and playing games of who can walk faster and turn around and alert. Carolota thinks of all that has happened. She doesn��t understand all the details but she thinks that Dorotea has been withdrawn, and sometimes talking to herself as if there is another world before her. She hopes that whatever is going on they can go back to normal when this is over. She sees bats lining the ceiling and thinks she hears what must be the language of spiders and moths. She thinks she hears female voices moaning from the grave, but she softly it must be her imagination.


    Elsewhere Carmen has two Male Lions that march forward with machismo as her protectors. Looking back to be sure she is watching as they scour the edges of the hall for doorways and alcoves too dark for human eyes. Carmen hears whispers that the Lions don��t, she is troubled and wants to go back. The Lions however march forth into pools of darkness beyond her torchlight can penetrate. The top of her scalp feels like its contorting under its own spasms, under her breasts and between her thighs feels uncomfortable from swamp water and coarse military fabric rubbing her skin raw.


    Deep in the bowels of the Crypt is a chamber where Dorotea and Esma have been taken. Rosita is somewhere with Barstowe and his Dead Girls. Ozma still in Dorotea��s body awakens her mother. Esma has injured her spine. Struggling to lift her self from the ground. Ozma helps her and says, ��How do we get out of here?�� Esma shakes her head as if talking is more than she can muster. As soon as they touched hands horrible Witches seize them and drag them to some deeper terrors in the darkness. In a place like this any hiss, cackle or laughter feels like a slap across your soul, like the throbbing head during a fever or ear infection. A panic riddled skull being struck with a fist or being shouted at the moment you open your eyes after oversleeping.


    Coming to an open room Xavier and General Villa limp forth into an area that has fallen in revealing moon light. There is two collapsed tunnels and one where Carmen and her Lion accomplices emerge. Villa is glad to see her, but before there can be any happy reunion there is a scream from the other tunnel. They all cringe, the material of the universe contorting around them like the gloved hands of a mugger on a moonless night.


    Running they come face to face with the Dead Girls feeding on dying Soldiers. Remembering the effectiveness of pieces of wood they all lament at once that they have forgotten to bring stakes, so bullets with have to make due.


    Shots ring out. Being hit, the Dead Girls don��t seem to have any feeling of pain. But instinctively flee, possibly based on some remembrance of the human fear of mortal wounds and guns. The Soldiers have already bled beyond saving and are going through their last death throws, involuntary muscle spasms.


    Up close gunshots do two things, especially in dark, closed spaces. One is ruin your hearing, making a screaming sound of silence after you tear an ear drum, pounding like physical violence when you feel weak and all you want is peace. The second is ruin your night vision, leaving streaks of light, strange colored spots in darkness rolling each time you blink your eyes. Offset images of any thing real that trails off like trying to look between the gaps of a thundering freight train at some starlit vista far beyond.


    Running the way the Dead Girls went, they come to the smell of fire and sulfur. There is light dancing from portals beyond a flooded room in inches of rain water that smells stagnant, full of corruption and toxic miasmas. In darkness smells have shape and sound has ominous weight.


    In their inner sanctum Three Witches sit on chairs of bones around a table spread out with candles and divination cards. Beyond in the withering light, their cauldron fire stinks of rot and pungent herbs. The room is scattered with the bluish bodies of half eaten children. Hollowed out skulls, husks of ribs separated from potato sacks of organs, pelvic bones tossed to dogs, a messy scene of torment, vivisection of the defenseless. Each witch has a hateful smiling face, filthy with soot, sweat and meat grease in this humid temple of despair. They wear stinking moth eaten funeral robes and pass a pipe of sharp smoke that burns the eyes, sucking rotten teeth and spitting sour blood into pails to collect for some foul fermentation recipe.


    They sing a song in an unknown language, beyond them chained to the wall Esma. Clothes barely hanging on, covering nothing, ripped to shreds. Looking abused by claws and whips. From an ornate neoclassical golden bird cage just big enough for her to fit in a fetal position, Dorotea is covered in herbs and oils, suspended above a cooking fire that is just starting to catch, growing ever higher to threaten the passed out girl. The Lions take initiative and pounce on the Witches who are savaged in seconds. Xavier and Carmen run to Dorotea and Esma, helping to unchain them and stop when the cries of the Witches being attacked by Lions begins to resound with Dorotea��s voice.


    Pausing to really focus on the fighting and looking again at the figures opposite, it is now young and vibrant women who look with lust in their eyes. Pancho is sold and begins to caress the voluptuous bodies while Xavier runs back to kick the Lions away from the bodies of Dorotea and Esma, but now he can��t be sure which is which. It is a trick by the Witches, they are Shape-shifters that can just as easily lure men to be killed in the night of passion with a knife in the base of the skull as a child kicks over a toy in a tantrum.


    Looking back, Pancho is getting a little too friendly with Esma. He runs back to Pancho slapping his hand down, getting a glare of hate he knows he will answer for later. Carolota who has come from the other direction rushes to the wall where Esma is crumpled at the foot of some mechanization of dismemberment, the pressing issue is Dorotea who is in the process of being cooked alive in a golden cage.


    Unchaining both of them, the rescuers look to each other for directions, this place and its evil aura saps any strength they have. A pressure is at work, making their eyes feel painfully swollen, their ears sting with a startling erratic pain each time their hearts beat. Dorotea and Esma go into convulsions, ululating passionate movements of some phantom dream-world lust. Nothing about it is alluring, a sickening and shameful feeling for the siblings, discarding clothing to cover the victims.


    Looking back to the initial Lion attack, Xavier sees the Lions paralyzed, eyes glowing like rubes as spirits move about them in a last evil ritual. He sees women covered in ash and spider webs. Holding candles and skulls, spitting blood and eyes aflame. In a mirage of hot smoke, distorted in the infernal shimmer of funeral fires�� he sees an image that haunts him. Snarling in a trance, breathing heavily, arms moving wildly in esoteric gestures. With a last malicious incantations they dissolve into something between bats and the blackest shadow. Leaving behind chipped bone and burst eyes of their corporal forms. He is sure this is what demons look like.


    When he blinks, he is alone again. Another trick of the light. Betrayal of the imagination by eyes so tired the world seems to vibrate after 36 hours of no rest and drained of all adrenaline. One has died, and two are bleeding but able to be interrogated. Carmen looms over them with the butt of a rifle, ��Who are you, why do you have my sister chained to the wall?�� The last living witch laughs, drawing a strike from the Rifle to crush an eye socket.


    One Witch still gasping and clawling, mutilated beyond recognition snarls. ��Because the peque?a puta was sold to us and belongs with the witch Hecate who was once Persephone, now enthralled to the ancient Babylonian demon Lamashtu to be fed on forever in Hell. We can get rich off little shits like her���� The sentence of was punctuated with chipped teeth and choking as Carmen had heard enough and began to smash the Witches faces into pits of chipped bone one by one with the butt of her rifle. Nodding to the Lions to resume their meal of the Witches bodies.

 Chapter 30. Phases of the Moon in Twilight

    Ashtoreth lays dying. Around her the mourning gods Artemis, Hermes, Persephone, Ophelia and Dorotea channeling Demeter. She clings to Dorotea��s hand, ��Blessed child, thank you for taking up arms. I will give you my spirit of courage and valor, but i urge you to return to your body. There is another at this moment wearing your skin, who has died in her own. As much as you want to help, you must fight for what is yours. If she is meant to return to life it will not be within your bones or behind your eyes.�� Dorotea nods, too overwhelmed to consider Ashtoreth��s words. Ashtoreth runs her thumb over Dorotea��s forehead, saying ��Go home. Gain the knowledge we entrusted to you, keep our memory alive among the Daughters of Men. The Eleusis Mystery School, the Essenes, Cathars, the Goddess Cult of the Druids and Wiccans are now yours to reignite.�� Dorotea eyes flash full of light and she is gone in an instant. The invisible spirit of King Sorsos was able to swirl into eternity just as Dorotea faded into the ether.


    Artemis wounded and much subdued from her normal fiery self, has Mithras on a chain like a whipped dog. She says, ��What can two friends say after endless lifetimes of conversations?�� Ashtoreth smiles warmly, ��In truth I long welcomed this day. Life with out the treasures of acknowledgement or the stories of past deeds leads to a strange kind of living death of memories. Watching glaciers carve mountains, continents rise and fall. A million years generations of life grow and thrive and sink to the sediment, was a full life for I. Ashtoreth the warrior, the lover, the mother, the creator and the destroyer is eternal and not contingent on a conscious intelligence. I am a force of nature and after a long rest if I chose it, I will make the world anew to suit my entertainment.��


    Hermes waits a moment to allow the silence to settle, ��I will listen for you in the wind and see you again on the other side of eternity. As I lay in stillness I will think on our time in the fields of youth and the song of trickling water in shaded brooks. Watching the world echo your actions, and quietly acknowledge your warm sun of spring and rains of autumn. For starlight and the brightness of the moon in peril and the water on the horizon of a dying man, I remember the musical poetry of your smile and the starry wisdom in your eyes.�� A tear rolls down Ashtoreth��s cheek made of twinkling stars and all the colors of reality in a dark prism.


    Persephone lays defeated, in tears, chained for her betrayal. Her first words catch in her throat. She tries to calm her self and says with unsure words, ��We Goddesses are but leaves on a common tree, we are the Bee and the Pollen. The wind that carries seeds. We are the teacher of songbirds and the motivation of light and air to heal wounds and guide how an infant sees the world. How can one young as I eulogize the light of the morning or the wind in twilight? These things will always rise again in the daily tragic comedy of life. Like dancing light broken by swaying of trees or the curiosity of beings watching the procession of the heavenly bodies. I will think of you and thank you for these things.��


    Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.


    Awakening an aura of cosmic intelligence. Ophelia the noble rabbit does not speak, radiating an outside presence with psychic communication, Demeter speaks through the ether of mind. ��Ah how the world must laugh at us now. Even the creators of the universe and planets created as an afterthought seemingly giggle as the old maids of eternity fall by the things we created. How foolish Mithras and Aries will feel when they realize their own day will come with out the promise of welcoming hands to guide them at the end of time. How will the tides and equinox do with out us, oh mother of time? Who had names like Minerva, Innana, Anat, Gaia, Oshun, Ma��at, Sekmet, Xbaquiyalo, Onatah, Ixnextli, ��rohirohi, Nomhoyi, Amaterasu, Yemay��, Citrasena, Bhrkuti-Tara, Prajnaparamita, Sulis, Kotisri,Preah Mae Thoroni, Hine-Tu-Whenua, Whaitiri, Potii-ta-rire. A million manifestations, Oh ��Ashtar-Chemosh, E?tan, Ataksak,�� of 10,000 fertility cults. Each with its own followers, rituals, traditions and rhymes. Join me in the merriment of spirit beyond the legends and mirth of life. We who invented legends and first spun the globe of time. Beguiling the ego, a cure to bruised feelings and healing to malice and spite. We who walked the rings of Saturn, shined the first chalice or flew on the wings of a butterfly. We who inspired The Rub��iy��t, and bore the great God Pan of song and wine. Gave joy and hope its time, flight to the birds and sight to the blind. Walking roads of summer and singing farewells while the world turns to ice. Among the roads to paradise we offered the thunder our voice and always reclaim whats yours and mine. We who invented sunshine first discovered diamonds and decided to allow the tired to die. We too have to laugh at this ending even when childhood wonder and pride of old age comes with a caveat in eternal life����


    They all watch as Ashtoreth turns into sparkles of pollen that wafts off into the distance in the moonlight. A slow rising of wolves howls, joined by owls and mourning rabbits, songbirds, frogs and aimless spirits. Insects and lizards with no vocal chords pound tree limbs, the stars grow bright as a million sunrises streak across the sky with trails on the moon and falling stars replayed once more as the world settles into twilight. Volcanos spew steam and the ocean wails with reverberations of cataclysmic waves that die out just before upturning boats whose sails flutter from wind blowing in reverse for a time. Temples long overgrown and covered are marked by wildflowers that rise from nothing, even the moss and shadows seem to mourn Ashtoreth known as Ishtar, Dido, Astarte and Asherah. A light was lost forever.

 Chapter 31. The Hurricane of 1890

    Barstowe��s stronghold in the Americas is the lawless seaside town of Bagdad Beach. It was a Mexican port that was mostly populated by pirates, smugglers, fugitives and undesirables chased out of Texas. Built up as a possible location for fleeing Confederates hoping to board a ship to Europe, Australia or South America. In reality it was a dying port were local fishermen who went missing had their homes reclaimed by the tide and boats silted in by sinking buildings and moorings. Every day there was more salt water in the wells and once healthy ostiaries of birds and nature became places to toss unwanted bodies or hookers who talked too loud, one too many times.


    This nuance was lost on majority of Americans who came to see the Carnival there. The Barstowe European Circus was like a gem in a dark world of decay. The semi permanent Carnival was set up on high ground overlooking Bagdad Beach. The most famous of the amusements that drew tourists were The House of Spirits, The fist fighting Clowns, The Freak-show and the Animals of India and the Orient.


    This is what drew in trainloads of school children both chaperoned and unsupervised who flooded into the Carnival to see ghastly events like men who stuck swords through their chests, or medical oddities, ��man eating�� Indian tigers. Chief among them the Basilisk, a creature born so deformed it would be hard to find the descriptive words for it beyond a rooster head on a man but with arms and legs of a crab that eats whole cats before the crowd and fights off giant African snakes.


    Among the fortune tellers and stable of hucksters of every racket like ��mentalism�� or reading cards, guessing birthdays or reading astrological charts there were ��Three sages of the Orient.�� These mute swarthy men, would put on shows of real magic that was unexplainable. With no curtains or hidden boxes they could conjure fire, survive decapitations and even seeming to meditate while burning alive. Despite some outcry in the conservative press this gained the most notoriety with catholic school girls and nuns who would come to marvel at the death defying feats.


    On the morning of the storm, there was a group of 40 private school girls from a Catholic School in Louisiana who went missing. They arrived on a series of chartered local sail boats and carried them selves with the typical air of wealth you expected from private school girls, impressed by nothing, offended by everything and trying to humiliate the vendors at every opportunity while making quips in French and intentionally bad Spanish.


    Rules did not apply to them, and the priests and nuns who accompanied them seemed to be as interested in amorous moments alone than keeping the girls out of ��satanic acts�� like the House of Spirits. The School Girls loved the aura of the place. Vaulted ceilings, nooks where statues of saints now lie toppled or defaced.


    His lair was built in the catacombs of a seaside Cathedral that no longer stands above, smashed to dust by canon fire during the fall of the executed Habsberg Emperor of Mexico, Maximilian I. Installed against the Monroe Doctrine by Napoleon III. Executed for the ��Black Decree�� that killed 11,000 Mexican Partisans fighting against the French puppet Monarch. The ruins above connect to deep Pre-Colombian basements and annexes. It was a series of broad stone galleries lined with full length mirrors. Every few feet there was side corridor reflecting light of a magic show or display of some kind.


    Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.


    Crazed birds of fabulous plumage flutter along the ceilings and real bats squeak and dart at guests. There was so much history in this place. The girls as rich as European nobility but without titles or storied history were in love with rich frescos of the old world, real dungeons and charnel houses where centuries of bones were arranged in morbid designs and mosaics. It was truly a house of death, they imagined the walls of skulls watched them, the mass graves of plague victims and religious persecution cried out from this hellish abyss. It was the kind setting for grotesque victorian stories they loved from Edgar Allan Poe, Lord Dunsany, Mary Shelly, Algernon Blackwood and Arthur Machen.


    In the sections used by the Carnival were also dioramas of Salem Witch Trials, Spanish Inquisition, ancient purge of the Canaanites, Alchemy, the Knights Templar executions, other hideous displays like a black mass, human sacrifice and cannibalism in the south seas. But it was the Catacombs and Catholic Tombs they wanted to see, they heard tales of Aztec alters of sacrifice and wells filled with the gold and silver of beheaded Kings. They wanted some kind of relic to prove they were here, a gold tooth or Spanish locket, gold crucifix or skull small enough to hide in their blue velvet gloves.


    The school girls loved these oddities above so much, but the overgrown tunnels called out to them. Tripping over tree roots and exploring with stolen torches sounded like so much more fun than following stern Nuns and sly Priests. So they gathered more girls in other cliques and groups of friends to come down and see the ghastly rooms bellow.


    They compulsively went back in over and over until the Priests and Nuns who were ready to leave could no longer find the girls as warning of high waves and winds made many of the Americans pack up and leave. Acting on the tip the girls had decided to return to the school first as a prank on the clergy staff the teachers hurriedly left. This was a mistake as the girls were down the catacombs beneath the house of spirits as the weather turned ugly.


    As the American tourists started to leave, the Catholic private school girls decided to play some pranks on each other. Going into the mirrored walls and galleries, they would lie in wait in pools of shadow to scare passers by. With out the sense to intuit there are actual denizens of the night who are not playing pranks.


    At that time there were the unsightly members of the carnival, too ��long in tooth�� to come out during the day. These more bestial Carnies could be mistaken for wolves and bats with their feral eyes and matted fur. As the girls played jokes and giggled at pantomimes, they were being hunted, never to be seen alive again.


    Water from above streams into ancient Pre-Colombian burial grounds. Mazes of Aztec tombs flood with the monsters within climbing tree roots in the walls. The girls laughter is silenced. Some unknown claws and beady red eyes came for them while the storm built above. These girls became Barstowe��s ��most beloved family.�� He enjoyed cultured playthings over the normal stray farm boys and battered wives who sought out this line of work to avoid violence at home.


    Above ground the wind picks up to over 100 miles per hour. Wooden beams and metal rods whip by in black flashes. The temperature is bellow 40 degrees. Lightning and tornado forms out to sea whip around as waves of nearly 20 feet smash into the wooden shanties on the hills above the shore. Windows smash, trees are ripped up by the roots. Barstowe��s train is toppled by waves that drag horses and gypsies alike inland across farmsteads beyond Bagdad Beach. Where once neoclassical edifices stood with bright marble and bronze, now the land is green and hellish with upside down forests lie submerged in deep marshes.


    Amusement rides and pavilions turned into piles of smoldering sticks. Tents full of exotic animals now funeral shrouds to bloated corpses of elephants and tigers, carrion for birds of prey that now fill the sky in clouds of hundreds of hungry vultures. A thriving trade center destroyed so it would never be a site of commerce again.


    Ships carried inland miles now house bandits and where once prosperous traders owned fisheries and fleets, now they are soulless winos living beside creeks and scavenging gold teeth and rings from old Spanish cemeteries. Its said that 100 miles north in Galveston, the coastal town was turned into a debris field 30 feet tall and 2 miles long.

 Chapter 32. Dorotea’s Spiritual Exodus

    Dorotea awakens on a desolate beach marred by millions of pieces of broken glass. Her hands and legs are webbed with networks of cuts that ebb and flow gouts of blood with the tide. She crawls to her feet. Her stomach giving her horrid pains. She is shocked to see her body polluted with a parasite. She knows the signs of pregnancy but she can��t believe it. Time past and present are lost to her but she knows she is not yet a woman and under no circumstance should she be pregnant. She has never laid with a man, and has no reason to believe in miraculous conception.


    Dorotea falls to her knees in the sand. Eyes pooling while a rancid spasm of vomit builds in her throat. She screams and pounds the sand with her fists, forgetting the glass shards and cries out. Going into convulsions of pain both physical and spiritual. She sees flashes of her sisters and brother in trouble. Stark scenes of violence in malevolent catacombs. She remembers the evil smirk of Barstowe, the haunted eyes of his Djinn, the tired eyes of clowns just in it for a buck and a cot to sleep.


    Overcome by sickness she spouts out endless streams of putrid poison from within her bowels while tearing at her wet dress. She feels lightning and great tumult of violence in her bones. Her fingernails ripping backwards with the strain of purging this darkness from her womb. Her eyes running black with makeup down her face in a deathlike visage. Her skin pale and bruised she looks up to see the horizon beyond is wreckage of some ugly land. Brutalist architecture of un-ornate stone and brick blasted some unknown shade of beige and white. But something is wrong with this place. A miasma is in the air, brown and smoky it burns the eyes. She smells chemicals and decay. Beyond what is normal for the seaside of rotten fish and scuttled boats. Something industrial and malicious.


    Before her in this sprawling Necropolis is no life save for birds and bones of ancient life. It is a graveyard of half submerged ruins, falling at severe angles. On every surface is something nasty. Tens of thousands of red bulbous masses stream over roofs down walls and blighting whole cinderblock towers with some hideous debris. Walking among the decay she sees what the red blobs are, a dried up and wind whipped school of blood red jellyfish left behind by some phantom black wave that has long since left these creatures writhing in pain, stolen from their home in the depths and stuck in limbo, spending eternity in some pained state of Undeath. She feels sad for them but also disgusted as their translucent spines seems to blow free in the wind. Tangling around her legs like invisible thorny vines as they whisp by.


    Stolen story; please report.


    From behind her she feels a heat, something massive racing from the direction of the sea. She gasps as it looks as if the sun has turned black and begun to fall from the sky. A fallen star coming directly towards her, seeking her alone for eradication from somewhere deep in the blackness of space. She looks to see a mighty streak of black and purple flame that rips her ear drums as it crosses over head. Slamming into the ruined city of Blighted Sepulchers. The wind is knocked out of her while the air itself seems to vibrate with a monumental forces of the higher spheres of the universe. Every where around her facades crumble, towers of petrified corpses fall into powerful blasts of powdered stone and asbestos.


    From the center of the blast radius she sees a moving shape. Mercury, The Black Knight, rises from a crater of molten glass. Dorotea is speechless as he walks up to her. She can��t place why but she feels an unease. She slowly reaches out and lifts the face plate of his mask revealing the true form of Sorsos. With a snarl he plunges a flaming sword into her belly. She feels as if the blow would vaporize her soul to dust but the opposite, she feels more real than she ever has.


    While the shrieking black form of a slithering deformed baby is pulled from her stomach. She looks and sees something writhing in its death throes that would be described as looking more like a deadly spider, a crab and a cockroach than a giant angry baby with skull features more like a troll or goblin than man. Seeing this vile demon freed from her soul, she feels like something profound was lost as she again slips from one world to the next. One word on her lips, ��Lamashtu��. She doesn��t know what it means but feels a maddening itch fill her soul.

 Chapter 33. Ozma’s Possession: An End To Suffering For All Who Must Hide From Daylight

    Padre Tuti Arranga and Xavier keep a silent vigil on the body of Dorotea, inhabited by another spirit. At the same time Carmen and Carolota rifle through chests and sacks of riches. The Padre has come to realize it is not an evil spirit, thus leaving him impotent and clueless on how to answer the request Xavier made for an Exorcism. The Padre has taken to preparing Holy Water, Candles, Rosaries and his worm-eaten copy of The Roman Ritual, the source of all Catholic wisdom on The Rite of Exorcism.


    The Witches bodies gurgle and twich, spasming in death throes while bones crunch and Lions fight over entrails. Haunting stillness breaks as the fire pit pops and cracks. This doesn��t seem that odd but it makes the room feels like it has an unseen presence. A scrawl in blood was scratched into the wall. ��Hecate!�� Padre Tuti crosses him self looking at the contents of the room. Bones, fleshless heads of every creature that lives in the marshes here. Seeing a cauldron with blonde hair and a young girl��s unmistakable sweet cherub-like face boiling among sticks and gourds. Some vile incense like skunks in heat burns the eyes.


    Padre Tuti whispers ��Palo Mayombe.�� Xavier doesn��t know what this means. Padre says in a hoarse voice that catches in his throat, ��Cuban Torture Magic, they feed the evil spirits of anger with suffering. Its rare, not something you want to find in dark tunnels beneath a Circus of Vampiros y Muertos Vivientes who feed on the flesh and souls of the innocent. Something deeply unholy lives in this forgotten place. Matamoros and Playa Bagdad have a reputation for Satanismo. Warlocks, Sorcerers and Brujos, Can��bales hiding in Sepulcros y Mausoleos marred the Undead. Nothing I have ever believed in or experienced has prepared me for tonight. I lost my faith years ago, but now I don��t know�� Maybe Santa Muerte or the Virgin de Guadalupe is our only hope now. God save me! I don��t want to die down here. If we survive tonight Nuestro se?or Jesucristo I will never sin or drink Tequila again.��


    Almost sub-consciously within seconds he breaks this pact with God. Liquor streaming down is quivering chin. Padre Tuti��s eyes scan the horrors in this menagerie of filth. He sees mummified hands, eyes on fish hooks and pickled human spinal cords hang from strings like watchers on a mournful vigil. An evil shiver in his spine makes Padre want to burn the Witches still mumbling curses and incantations even while torn into several pieces, Padre shrieks ��?Madre misericordiosa, Mar��a, gu��anos!�� shaking violently while clutching his crucifix with his eyes closed.


    Chasing the Lionesses away, Padre Tuti takes a glob of lard from the cauldron with a laddle and strikes the Witches torn apart bodies alight. Xavier kicks over the Palo Cauldron laying bare the stark atrocity within, ritualistic child murder. Padre Tuti says ��?Dios nos ayude en este tiempo de oscuridad!�� in a whimper before taking a hearty chug of a flask concealed in his vestments. The beams above shudder under some supernatural weight. Sounds almost too high pitch to hear make both men recoil. Pressure in the air builds, Padre Tuti tries to run and Xavier has to dash after him.


    A sudden wind blows out the candles. Creaking boards and gasps fill the blackness. They keep thinking they hear an ugly music coming from the Catacombs. Its low and easy to fool ones self that it could be echoing tides, or hooting birds, an owl. But there is something haunting about it. A baritone, a cruel violin, chaos of symbols and flues clashing like a whisper of the dying far off, out of this maelstrom of sound the horrific wailing of the Witches makes it unmistakable as not just ominous but threatening of some demonic war band coming for them from the depths of these crypts.


    This has a direct impact of Ozma��s spirit and Esma. They have an instinctual revulsion towards this cacophony of violence. Ozma in Dorotea��s body has broken out in sweats,she jumps violently at Padre Tuti. Seizing his neck with a snarl, then like nothing happened begins twirling and dancing like a ballet, hurling herself into walls while her eyelids flutter, making sounds not of this world. Xavier and Padre Tuti push Esma back, who is unconsolable. The Holy Water was smashed. Padre must bless a new container full of Holy Water. In Spanish he prays over bottles of rainwater streaming from above. Making the sign of the cross. Dorotea��s siblings hold hands around her, tears in eyes. They try to smile at each other assuringly, repeating the sermon Padre Tuti reads aloud.


    ��Dios, que para la salvaci��n del g��nero humano hiciste brotar de las aguas el sacramento de la nueva vida, escucha con bondad, nuestra oraci��n e infunde el poder de tu benedic��n sobre ��sta agua, para que sirviendo a tus misterios asuma el efecto del la divina gracia que espante los demonios y expuse las dolencias y as��, al ser rociados, tus fieles sean liberados de todo da?o; que en sitio que ser�� asperjado con ��sta agua no residan los esp��ritus del mal y se alejen todas las insidias del oculto enemigo; haz que tus fieles manteni��ndose firmes por la invocaci��n de tu santo nombre sean libres de todas asechanzas. Te lo pedimos por Christo nuestro Se?or, Amen.��


    ��Dios todopoderoso, fuente y origen de la vida alma y del cuerpo bendice ��sta agua, que vamos a usar conde para implorar el perd��n de nuestros pedados y alcanzar la ayuda de tu gracia contra toda enfermedad y asechanza del enigma. Conc��denos, Se?or, por tu misericordia, que las aguas viven siempre broten salvadoras, para que podamos acercarnos a ti con el coraz��n limpio y evitemos todo peligro de alma y cuerpo por Jesucristo, nuestro Se?or, Am��n��


    ��San Miguel Arc��ngel, defiendas en la lucha; s�� nuestro amparo contra la perversidad y asechanzas del demonio. Que Dios manifest�� sobre ��lsu poder, es nuestra humilde s��plica: y tu, oh! Pr��ncipe de la milicia celestial, con el poder que Dios te ha conferido, arroja al inferno a satan��s y a los dem��s esp��ritus malignos que vagan el mundo para la perdici��n del las almas. Am��n.��


    To begin the Rite of Exorcism. Padre Tuti gives Xavier instructions to bind Dorotea��s hands and feet loosely. Enough she cannot assail them with violence or allow the demon to attempt suicide, but not so tight she will break her own bones going into convulsions. Chanting rhythmic Latin and Spanish verses and anointing Dorotea��s forehead with holy water and sacred oil.Padre begins the Latin verses of the Roman Ritual for Exorcizing Evil Spirits. Dorotea gnashes her teeth and to keep her from breaking them a wooden crucifix is placed in her mouth to prevent the demons from biting off her tongue while she spews curses and incantations of Hecate. The Padre raises his voice over Dorotea��s babbling, booming sacred words of power into life. In Latin he recites��


    ��Pr��nceps glorios��ssime coel��stis mil��tiae, sancte M��chael Arch��ngele, def��nde nos in pro��lio et colluctati��ne, quae nobis est adv��rsus pr��ncipes et potest��tes, adv��rsus m��ndi rect��res tenebr��rum h��rum, contra spiritu��lia nequ��tiae, in coel��stibus. V��ni in aux��lium h��minum; quos Deus cre��vit inextermin��biles, et ad im��ginem similit��dinis suae f��cit, et a tyr��nnide di��boli emit pr��tio m��gno. Proeli��re h��die cum beat��rum Angel��rum ex��rcitu pro��lia D��mini, s��cut pugn��sti ��lim contra d��cem sup��rbiae luc��ferum et ��ngelus ��jus apost��ticos; et non valu��runt, n��que l��cus inv��ntus est e��rum ��mplius in ca��lo. Sed proj��ctus est dr��co ��lle m��gnus, s��rpens ant��quus, qui voc��tur Di��bolus et S��tanas, qui sed��cit univ��rsum ��rbem; et proj��ctus est in t��rram, et ��ngeli ��jus cum ��llo m��ssi sunt. En ant��quus inim��cus et homic��da vehem��nter er��ctus est. Transfigur��tus in ��ngelum l��cis, cum t��ta malign��rum spir��tuum cat��rva l��te c��rcuit et inv��dit t��rram, ut in ea d��leat n��men Dei et Christi ��jus, anim��sque ad aet��rnae gl��riae cor��nam destin��tas fur��tur, m��ctet ac p��rdat in sempit��rnum int��ritum.


    V��rus nequ��tiae suae, t��mquam fl��men immund��ssimum, dr��co mal��ficus transf��ndit in h��mines deprav��tos m��nte et corr��ptos c��rde; sp��ritum mend��cii, impiet��tis et blasph��miae; halit��mque mort��ferum lux��riae, viti��rum ��mnium et iniquit��tum. Eccl��siam, ��gni immacul��ti sp��nsam, vaf��rrimi h��stes replev��runt amaritud��nibus, inebri��runt abs��nthio; ad ��mnia desiderab��lia ��jus ��mpias mis��runt m��nus. ��bi s��des beat��ssimi P��tri et C��thedra verit��tis ad l��cem g��ntium constit��ta est, ibi thr��num posu��runt abominati��nis et impiet��tis suae; ut perc��sso Past��re, et gr��gem disp��rdere v��leant. Ad��sto ��taquae, Dux invict��ssime, p��pulo Dei contra irrump��ntes spirit��les nequ��tias, et fac vict��riam. Te cust��dem et patr��num s��ncta vener��tur Eccl��sia; te glori��tur defens��re adv��rsus terr��strium et infern��rum nef��rias potest��tes; t��bi tr��didit D��minus ��nimas redempt��rum in sup��rna felicit��te loc��ndas. Deprec��re Deum p��cis, ut c��nterat S��tanam sub p��dibus n��stris, ne ��ltra v��leat capt��vos ten��re h��mines, et Eccl��siae noc��re. ��ffer n��stras pr��ces in consp��ctu Alt��ssimi, ut c��to ant��cipent nos miseric��rdiae D��mini, et appreh��ndas drac��nem serp��ntem ant��quum, qui est di��bolus et s��tanas, ac lig��tum m��ttas in abyssum, ut non sed��cat ��mplius g��ntes.


    Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.


    Exorciz��mos te, ��mnis imm��nde sp��ritus, ��mnis sat��nic pot��stas, ��mnis infern��lis advers��rii, ��mnis l��gio, ��mnis congreg��tio et s��cta diab��lica, in n��mine et virt��te D��mini n��stri J��suChr��sti, eradic��re et effug��re a Dei Eccl��sia, ab anim��bus ad im��ginem Dei c��nditis ac preti��so div��ni ��gni s��nguine red��mptis. Non ��ltra ��udeas, s��rpens callid��ssime, dec��pere hum��num g��nus, Dei Eccl��siam p��rsequi, ac Dei el��ctos exc��tere et cribr��re sicut tr��ticum. ��mperat t��bi Deus alt��ssimus, cui in m��gna tua sup��rbia te s��mile hab��ri ��dhuc praes��mis; qui ��mnes h��miness vult s��lvos f��eri, et ad agniti��nem verit��tis ven��re.


    ��mperat t��bi D��us Pater; ��mperat t��bi Deus F��lius; ��mperat t��bi D��us Sp��ritus S��nctus. ��mperat t��bi maj��stas Chr��sti, aet��rnum Dei V��rbum c��ro factum,qui pro sal��te g��neris n��stri tua inv��dia p��rditi, humili��vit semet��psum f��ctus ob��diens ��sque ad m��rtem; qui Eccl��siam s��am aedific��vit s��pra f��rmam p��tram, et p��rtas ��nferi adv��rsus eam n��mquam esse praevalit��ras ed��xit, cum ea ipse permans��rus ��mnibus di��bus ��sque ad consummati��nem sa��culi.


    ��mperat t��bi sacram��ntum Cr��cis, omni��mque christi��nae f��dei Mysteri��rum virtus. Imperat tibit exc��lsa Dei G��nitrix Virgo Maria, quae superb��ssimum c��put tuum a pr��mo inst��nti immacul��tae suae concepti��nis in sua humilit��te contr��vit. ��mperat t��bi f��des sanct��rum Apostol��rum P��tri et P��uli, et ceter��rum Apostol��rum.��mperat t��bi M��rtyrum s��nguis, ac pia Sanct��rum et Sanct��rum ��mnium interc��ssio.


    ��rgo, dr��co maled��cte et ��mnis l��gio Diab��lica, adjur��mus te per D��um v��vum, per D��umv��rum, per D��ums��nctum, per D��um qui sic dil��xit m��ndum, ut F��lium suum unig��nitum d��ret, ut ��mnis qui cr��dit in eum non p��reat, sed h��beat v��tam aet��rnam: c��ssa dec��pere hum��nas creat��ras, e��sque aet��rnae perditi��nis ven��num propin��re: d��sine Eccl��siae noc��re et ��jus libert��ti l��queros inj��cere.


    V��de s��tana, inv��ntor et mag��ster ��mnis fall��ciae, h��stis hum��nae sal��tis. Da l��cum Chr��sto, in quo n��hil inven��sti de op��ribus tuis; da l��cum Eccl��sia Uni, Sanctae, Cath��licae, et Apost��licae, quam Chr��stus ��pse acquis��vit s��nguine suo. Humili��re sub pot��nti m��nu Dei; contrem��sce et ��ffuge, invoc��to a n��bis s��ncto et terr��bili nomin�� J��su, quem ��nferi tr��munt, cui Virt��tes cael��rum et Potest��tes et Dominati��nes subj��ctae sunt, quem Ch��rubim et S��raphim indef��ssis v��cibus l��udant, dic��ntes: S��nctus, Sanctus, Sanctus D��minus D��us S��baoth.��


    Xavier strokes her hair trying to smile while Padre Tuti becomes more and more intense. Struggling to keep candles lit as if a great hurricane batters them from the Catacombs. Strange cruel light flashes in the dark corridors beyond as if lightning is contained with in this unholy place. The Padre has a look of terror in his eyes, all involved curl their fingers so tight they rip nails backwards and draw blood from their palms. Dorotea��s sisters wail and Esma looks deflated, dormant as if reliving every horror she has known.


    Dorotea��s body, inhabited by Ozma jumps to her feet, smashing Padre Tuti in the mouth with a balled fist, kicking Xavier in the chest, slamming Carmen and Carolota��s heads into a wall across the room. The Possessed body of Dorotea shakes as she holds Esma by the neck choking the life from her. Ozma is not alone in Dorotea��s flesh. Digging her nails into Esma��s arm! Ozma screams, ��Mother something is wrong! A horrible spirit is pushing me out!�� She kicks her feet and goes into convulsions. Both gasping as they hear something guttural in Dorotea��s body.


    Persephone in her Manifestation of Hecate thrashes behind Dorotea��s eyes, filling her veins with hate, her belly bulges and her arms and legs thrash so violently they can barely hold her down to keep her from breaking her own bones in distress. Dorotea��s eyes burn with hostility, her jaw is dislocating and splits down the middle like an Insect as she screams incantations in forgotten tongues of the Mycenaean and Phoenician ancients. Dorotea tries to blind her self with savage slashes at her own eyes. It takes the combined effort of all to keep her from permanently injuring her self.


    Beyond the Exorcism Carolota and Carmen dash to find some vessel of power or magical fetish to aid in the operation. Opening box as large as a coffin they both turn to the shrill final scream of Dorotea and ominous silence before they look inside. Something grotesque slithers to life in the coffin sized box. Dorotea goes limp as Esma screams and cradles her head. Whispering things only a mother speaking to a dying child should ever say or hear. To her this is not Dorotea��s body, but that of her sacrificed daughter who was taken by Barstowe��s necromantic corpse magic.


    Carmen and Carolota don��t have time to react before a corpselike hand reaches out to them from within the box. They shudder and crawl away as a corpse sewn together of 100 missing children sits up wearing a flower decorated hat that screams out, ��Mother!�� The Sisters scramble away, cowering near Dorotea��s lifeless body, that also snaps back to life. Horrified both recoil into an alcove where Barstowe and his three accomplices, the Djinn-Magi Shapeshifters, stand holding knives.


    The Patchwork Corpse runs into Esma��s arms. While Dorotea sits up dazed saying, ��I come back to life from the void.�� Barstowe has a nasty crooked smile, stepping into the candle light. Dorotea too startled to fully digest the sight, sees the hateful 8 foot tall corpse of Sorsos The Sorcerer lurking on Barstowe��s shoulder. His Djinn now have eyes of fire while their Damascus Steel daggers sparkle in firelight. Xavier who left to gather guns and wood to make stakes turns a corner and sees Barstowe and his Sages enter the room with his family, he sends the Lions forward and charges behind with a heavy belt fed machine gun ready for a fight.


    As he reaches the room Xavier sees the Lions ripping into the Turbans of the Djinn Sages. Barstowe catching hell from the Patchwork Corpse who has leapt on his back poking his chest with a knife. Carolota and Carmen are knocked back as the Djinn Magi grabbing Barstowe. Fleeing in a move like a shadow streaking by. Every one is startled and silent as the Lions streak by in pursuit.


    There is silence. Just the sound of water dripping into deep pools echoing in endless tunnels, chittering of bats flying by and the squeals of rats rolling off floating logs and discarded jugs. Collecting their weapons and what treasure they can carry, they move deeper into the blackness. Entering flooded tunnels above their ankles, every step sounds like horses galloping.


    The tunnel bleeds into an endless chamber with statues covering the walls in alcoves with eyes peering from behind saints and christian figures hewn in marble. Rosita stands before them with her arms out like Virgin Mary, wearing a white night dress. Mouth scarlet of blood and eyes glowing like gold coins in candlelight.


    From behind them Freaks, Clowns and Carnies emerge from laying in wait. Pancho, standing beside Carolota and Carmen has had enough. Demanding Rosita come to him. She obliges and they embrace. Her grasp tightening until Pancho panics, pulls his pistol and shoots her in the armpit trying to peel himself away.


    Carmen and Carolota jump on her, putting a stick between Rosita��s teeth and pulling her fingers backwards. Rosita shoves Pancho onto the flooded chamber knee deep floor, grabbing her sisters and disappearing in flight.


    As the Carnies, Freaks and Clowns attack there is a deafening sound from above. An impact that knocks the wind from lungs and fills the chamber with white hot flash of light before a wave of powdered brick and sharp stone rushes into fill the vacuum. Dynamite shatters the roof letting in the dawn light. As the stone roof tumbles down on them they hear the US cavalry trumpets blaring ��Garryowen,��a song of the US Cavalry. While the Sisters flash into the dark side of the sky.


    Pancho grabbing Xavier says, ��Come on Cabr��n! We cannot afford to be taken alive.�� Rushing back into the tunnels. Giving a half hearted farwell the Soldada Commander Martiza waves and follows her guerrilla compatriots.In the aftermath of the Massacre, ropes are thrown down to the survivors. Dorotea, Esma and the Patchwork Corpse. Being pulled form the Tomb they see General Pershing and the Punitive Expedition who has Barstowe bloody and in chains.


    Smiling General Pershing says, ��Lord Hiram Tiberus God-damn Barstowe. Why the hell are you still alive to vex me after we were all so glad to hear you had died? You British swine!�� Barstowe glowers, he looks over his shoulder at the red rising Sun and his exposed skin catches on fire. Like some strange magic Barstowe��s chains drop while a black shape streaks like a comet into the body of General Pershing�� Like breathing in ashes in a fire, while erasing its self from the onlookers minds and memory.


    No one notices right away The Magi and Dead Girls were never taken alive. Turning to mist in the shadows and finding some deep pools of darkness to wait for the night. Dorotea, Esma and The Patchwork Corpse who is Ozma are not even interviewed. With dirty faces and grubby clothes they melt into the Mexican peasants who came to see the end of the battle where the Americano��s showed up just in time to set up cameras and stage photos and did none of the dying.


    With a last look Dorotea sees the Carnival Henchmen being hanged against the sunrise. The tunnels beneath the Barstowe European Circus smoke from fiery pits where unknown horrors in crypts and catacombs wither piles of strange and deformed corpses. Dorotea hopes the Witches of the Song stay dead and give the region peace and quiet.


    She feels an urge to hunt with a bow and play the harp. Things outside of her life experience up to this point. She wonders if this is the talents of one of her Holy Guardian Angels. She feels like a new dawn is coming and she feels good about the choices she made, but maybe she should have shown more mercy to those that did not show it to her. In the future she plans to take the more temperate path of wisdom, love and light. Her only wish is that those suffering are healed.


    Questions linger in her heart as to the true nature of her friends Hermes and Mercury and what became of Persephone? Where is the evil magicians Sorsos and the devilish undead occultist Barstowe? Most of all she wants to know where her Sisters have gone and if Xavier and Pancho Villa truly escaped the roving bands of vengeful American soldiers in the tombs beneath Playa Bagdad. What of Aries and the fiend Mithras? Why does she feel like every thing she accomplished could unravel at any moment? Most of all, would Ashtoreth and Demeter be proud of the woman she becomes?

 Epilogue

    Dorotea knows she will never see Carolota and Carmen alive again. They are being bled and turned somewhere out of sight like Rosita was. The Magi and Dead Girls will all feed before night. Endless craters, mine shafts, mountain passes and abandoned boats for them to hide. She takes a little comfort in the road side shrines of Virgin Mary, knowing these hold some spark of the flame of the Mother Goddesses.


    She thinks of the traditions revealed to her when the spirits of Ashtoreth, Cernunnos, Demeter became tied to her own. Giving her a charisma and vivacious spirit she never had before. She feels certain of her words and actions. A confidence married to skill and long practice of centuries guides her life now. She mourns baby Pepito, she doesn��t know what became of him. She hopes he found a quiet river he could live away from people, in the shade and with out any more violence of war and desperate refugees seeing him as dinner.


    Tears well in her eyes. After all that fighting and walking through godless places of the night. Still they couldn��t survive, at the last moment stolen away by their own baby sister who was also too lost to be helped in time. One day Dorotea will go on adventures in Europe, traveling and living a full life. On the birth of every one of her seven children she is visited by Three Crowned Holy-Women dressed in fabulous riches from an age lost to time. Her Sisters love her from afar as they search for the Djinn who cursed them to an endless night.


    At least Esma and her dead daughter can find some kind of quality of life. Even if its living in the shadows, never able to look any one in the eye. Hiding a Corpse-like body that will never heal or look normal under any scrutiny of the light. Esma reads Tarot Cards on Piers and Amusement parks beside the Sea back in Europe.


    Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.


    Traveling on if any one catches sight of Ozma��s face under her large fashionable hat covered in silk flowers and her fabulous dresses bought with the Witches Treasure. Her Patchwork skin of different pigments and tones is smooth like glass, held together with staples and fine silk thread, smelling like flowers and perfume that fill her hollow ribcage. Her hazel green eyes are still pretty even framed in a corpse��s blue and grey face.


    Sometimes on the shores of Mexico people hear tales of Dead Catholic School Girls with glowing eyes. They seem to be harmless, only taking abusive criminals who stumble belligerently into the night. Leaving pieces of bullies and bandits in the Desert for the Coyotes and Buzzards to find. Living in abandoned boats, mine shafts and ghost towns. Sometimes leaving spoils of jewels and treasure for the lucky to find.


    A trend has begun in the hills and river valleys of Mexico. Shrines and carvings to the ancient Gods appear disguised with the Catholic iconography. The indigenous culture survives and thrives while the legacy of Dorotea has inspired some to refind the ways of the Goddesses once smashed out of existence from the realms of men. She thinks of her own people, of Northern Mexico and their ancient gods, vows to give them equal time of study and prayers. To seek out lost temples and lay wreaths for voices lost to Conquistadors rampage.


    Now obscured in groves of trees and flowers lie hidden alters to honor the old traditions. Pyramids and overgrown cities have offerings and reverence for what came before. Scholars and teachers take up to studying the cultures wiped out by the genocidal Abrahamic cultural vandalization of the world where fertility cults once oversaw a peaceful, wise and more thoughtful worldview of the ancients.


    Fin