The Academy: when the world has turned;

"As if you could kill time without injuring eternity." - - Henry David Thoreau

As Simon stepped into the hallowed Academy, once more that familiar hush of severe quiet settled on his shoulders like a yoke.

But this time, he came not as a student or a teacher, but an observer. He knew of the intangible silence of the Academy, and how it often suppressed a hushed wonder for all who passed through its invisible yet thoroughly formidable gates.

My red colt was not in the ambiguous shades long before he felt a waning presence in the corner of his mind. He grew more alert, broadening his thoughts as he felt the intrusion. An image of a mottled black fox jutted sharply in his brain, her piercing orange eyes perhaps a reflection of her fierce passion for knowledge.

Simon’s mouth formed a gentle o, a silent exclamation of surprise.

And then all at once he left the tranquility of the venerated glade behind him, the strange vulpine’s powerful tug on his mind dragging his own across eternity. His eyes, wide and white-rimmed, saw nothing but the image projected in his brain by the vulpine.

There he was, suspended between clouds and time - - looking down on a vast and powerful civilization with strange rock-structures much like the academy. But they were devoid of ash or vine, and each one was strangely lit from within by some spectral fire that burned on queer yellow branches (candles, though Simon had no recognition of those). He felt an overpowering sense of knowledge from here - - a knowledge that far surpassed his own, or any’s in the Element. It was a cruel and cunning knowledge, like the wolf’s or the raven’s - - a despairing type of elevated thought.

Sublimity in its’ purest, rawest form.

His eyes widened as he spotted movement from within the sepulcher–like chambers. Their dim halls flickered as the warped shape passed – Simon was reminded of an upright bear without the savage beauty (but oh, the savagery still remained!). His mind reeled, sickened by the thought of the upright animal. It walked crooked, its back bent and gnarled like some ancient tree. Simon’s mind staggered as he realized there were more cloaked animals like it, scurrying like ants from temple to temple, some carrying broad leather books and others golden trinkets with snakes and other animals carved into their faces.

Simon, a mix between cirrus-cloud and tempest, leaned forwards for a better look.

what he saw sickened him – the reason each hall was oddly lit and dim was because it was a slaughter-house - - these ancient, gnarled men shepherds to the massacred flock. The walls were not dim but dirty - - with blood and tendon and refuse. Women, bound and gagged, and men in their prime splayed open like some butchered pig.

Besides him, reclining on a thermal breeze, the vulpine laughed, her star-shine teeth bared with amusement at his horror before she too faded into swirling cloud.

And then the picture dissolved, and Simon was at the foot of the mountain that wrapped tenderly around the Academy. He peered down, his mane draping the ground. On the frozen earth, huddled and bedraggled, was the form of a human - - her hair whipped past her empty eye-sockets as the wind shrieked around her. Her twisted jaw was agape from the rigor mortis that settled in her emaciated frame, and the thin cloaking of tattered clothes around her bent body suggested she had died of cold before starvation. Her gnarled, bone-bare hand (her leathery skin dried and twisted around her desiccated tendons) clasped a glittering golden coin - - and on the face, Simon saw some spiked snake grinning maliciously upon it.

The same snake-creature on the priest’s golden trinket, red and raw. Fire.

And then, Simon noticed four other bodies, positioned similarly. Water, Lightning, Earth and Air all assembled, their decayed and withered hands clutching the snakes of their elements.

Simon reeled, recoiling from the dead body. The sacrifice to the gods. Gods of barbarity, gods he did not understand.

Once more the vulpine smiled, her bushy tail sweeping across the skies in the form of a fast approaching thunder-head that eclipsed the sun.

Simon looked down and he saw horses and delighted - - his winds sang but then, he noticed something odd about them - - they bore the two leggeds on their back. Intrigued, puzzled, he swooped down upon them in the form of air and flower-petals. The men on them screamed and kicked, and the snorting horses fast approached the bloody halls of the Academy, their nostrils flared and eyes widened as their riders steered them to its gates.

Dumb, snorting beasts.

Simon, puzzled, withdrew. His eyes turned to the south, towards the Academy. The priests had abandoned their posts, scurrying madly towards the foot-hills as the screaming men bore down upon them, swords glittering in the afternoon sun.

And then, massacre.

Simon’s mind screamed “No!”, yet nothing came from his mouth save for the sighing of wind.

As soon as the wraiths on their cowed horses came, they went. The piling of bodies was high, the priests beheaded and their skulls piked on sharpened tree sticks. The bloody cries of the victorious men sounded like howling wolves as the sun, bloody and raw with the pregnant promise of wrath, sunk behind the mountains.

The razed temples stood abandoned, their priests slowly decomposing into the earth they sprung from.

And the vines, the vines of destruction and disease, slowly crept across the stone’s edifice, crumbling the invincible stone.

And the earth slowly healed itself, flushing and devouring the broken bodies, healing the scars of rot and rape.

*

You knew, didn’t you? The air around him hummed, and the vulpine’s savage eyes glittered - - sun and moon, her teeth glittering stars in the suspended and heavy sky.

No. He didn’t. The head nodded wisely, the clouds swirling around her vague body. The mountain moved, sighed as Simon was slowly dragged back to the present. His eyes scoured the Academy walls for the stains of blood he had seen eons ago, for the withered bodies that once littered the Academy steps. But all that was there was vine and ash.

That’s why we like it here. She said, her teeth flashing as the winds howled victoriously around them. The solemnity that settles over you, over us, is because of past crimes that have not been avenged - - will not be avenged. The cowered body of the first-born child on the mountain top rose sickeningly to mind. The reason why this is the venerated place of studies is because horses like you know there is something greater to be learned here than your element. What could be greater than the pursuit of knowledge of your element?

The past is littered with injustices. Perhaps that is the reason why we strive to learn as much as we can - - to prevent history from repeating itself.

It made sense to Simon now - - why the Academy was chosen as the place for sacred study. the sick darkness of these two-legged animals in the face of their gods made sense to him now. False gods that today were lost and buried like the bodies beneath his feet.

False gods that like sunset, faded into night.

False gods, that like the crash of the sea, sighed and turned and were dragged into the depths.

False gods that like shooting stars glimmered violently and then faded into obscurity.

The horses made the Academy of their own because of the past there. Like Stonehenge in all its stately yet formidable beauty, it housed something more than the supposed aligning with the stars. Beneath Stonehenge were bodies nearly 5,000 years old, preserved and entombed by the cold, uncomprehending earth.

Simon sighed, and the mottled red and black vulpine faded into the dusk.

"My triumph has begun."
THE INFINITY x THE IMPETUS || AIR III + EARTH II