I am unnamed,
for if one calling was decreed from the heaven-
for if a hymn of my self was defined by a minstrel-
-And plastered upon my flesh,
it would bend to be muddy scribble.
But if an attempt was to be made
representing my selfdom
Such that:
it may be decreed in the land of gods
it may be defined in the land of mortals
this one shall be met with Muto’s.
For this is WHAT I am: a change…
While I do not own a name
I live between two lands.
I look up to find the old-
I look down to glance the new-
-and find naught the one, first of all things.
Matter not, never am I alone.
One day, children of the first came to me and pleaded with the sky.
I listened, and I thought:
they are wonderful and greater than I.
I live and I change limitlessly, such that I own no name.
They live and change, yet remain self-continuous.
Yet they pleaded to be something else, and I listened.
To the stars, they begged:
"I, son of peace, want to wield arms to keep my peace"
"I, child of the poor, want enough to feed the needy"
"I, daughter of the strong, want to share my victories with the weak"
"I, beast of the wood, want my flesh to be revered"
So they pleaded, so they wished, so I listened and changed them.
I changed them so that
the son of peace became the father of wars
the child of the poor became a revered lord
the daughter of the strong became a housemaker
the beast of the wood was prayed by all.
They changed, and I smiled as they kept the name they were born with.
So forth and so on: rain became snow; snow became rain. So forth and so on.
The children of the first came, pleading again.
So forth and so on.
They gave gifts of malt and wine-
to the sky, sea, wind, sun, cloud, earth
Not to forget the bird, the beast, the bug, or the fish
Even gifts for the clay, the grass, the stone, the incent
And the dust, the spit, the hair, the splinter…
They gifted to all that had a name, and I smiled nonetheless.
The rain became snow, and the snow became rain.
So forth and so on, they came to plead their deaths.
I did not change them, for it would make them ugly.
So they cried and made me wonder:
Am I truly what I am?
The day will come that I cannot change anymore
for I had become everything.
I sang, I cried, I wondered as to what I was.
So forth and so on until they were embraced by the earth.
One day, a man and his wife came to plead to a riverbed
again with wine and malt in hands, they were crying to me.
"Our daughter, her last breath was taken"
"We beg you to give her a life for she never saw the sun"
I listened, and I wondered:
this child of the first’s child had changed.
Giving her a new life wasn’t my right, for she wouldn’t have changed.
Thus I listened, wondered, and became their child.
I painted my wonderful red with soot and ashes
and changed my mane into a nightly gown.
For the first time, I had a name—the one of this changeless child.
I took her place and learned the love of those children of the first.
They dressed me like their own and taught me like their own.
Gave me toys like the others and shared their food like the others.
The rain became snow, and the snow became rain.
So forth and so on; I lived among them and was amazed by them.
They smiled and laughed; they cried and pleaded; they raged and fought.
They changed more than I changed.
I remained young and small while they were old and tall.
Like the tallest birch, flaking in the wind and rotting on the inside,
they succumbed to their heigh and collapsed by my two feet.
I had changed once again… and buried those two by my heaves.
I am change eternal but found myself committing a sin.
Little tears that should have been of joy that begged for things to stay unchanging.
The rain became snow, and the snow became rain.
So forth and so on until I found myself not as I.
Thus I changed and became hated.
I the child, went on to drown itself so that the air in my lungs be changed
so that my voice not change those I betrayed…
I changed to the Change and changed to the child.
So forth and so on, as the rain became snow and the snow became rain.
I cried, laughed, raged, smiled, pleaded, and fought with my Self.
I lived in the land of the mortals, never in the land of the gods, but between both, yes.
For I am Change, and I must change.
Thus when the Child pleaded to the stars with wine and malt,
I changed into something that could stand among the gods.
A knight the color of malt and with intoxicating blood.
So a dance of three began, with colors mixed to be indistinguishable.
The Knight, the Child, and me
-I- listened to the pleas, the anguishes, and the joys
of those in the land of gods and those in the land of mortals.
Then, one day came, a young from the land of mortals came.
She didn’t voice her plea and only muttered her mind to herself.
I listened to her tears, for they lamented to be gone.
The rain became snow, and the snow became rain.
So forth and so on, I listened to a wish she didn’t have
until she wished with her voice.
Not to the trees or the sky or the sea or the clouds
neither to the grass or the beasts or the stones or the rain…
So forth and so on as she told her wish to none that ever was.
Her wish was for me the Child
Her wish was for me the Knight
Her wish was for me the Change…
And her wish was made true.
҉
Kanga, as nothing more than a wisp of lightning, had wished for the strange flower to stay and fight by her side. It was a desperate wish that was born from overwhelming loneliness.
The flower bloomed once more and created a fractal of petals across the heavens in an instant. The sky was a bright fleshy red with raining thorns that split the ground apart so deeply that magma started to bleed like a festering wound. Paimon looked up with his hands frozen in horror. Hot blood started to rush to his head out of pure survival instinct, and he restarted his role as a conductor while his harp-wings screeched a horrendous symphony. The angels and spirits under him all raised their voices in harmony to bend the laws of reality to their knees.
To Kanga, this chaos felt no different than what she was used to, and she began to launch her own attack. She sent a handful of stars toward a flank of the choir, which were all locked into place before impact as if time had slowed down. Following this, a strange being able to reflect all light ran toward the stars to embrace them in a thousand folds of reflective flesh. The being consumed the stars and followed by spitting a highly condensed sphere toward Kanga. Before reaching her, the sphere collapsed under its own weight and tried to suck everything around to compensate. It was a black hole, and it formed just meters in front of Kanga. She felt all that she was was being pulled and torn off.
She was scared in this instant, thinking it was the end. So quick and worthless…
When she thought it was the end, a song as sweet as honey cleared her mind and blocked the forming black hole. Surprised, Kanga did her best to look in front of her and saw the figure of a young girl with long black hair but whose face was shadowy and disfigured. It was like a machine attempting to draw a person without even ever seeing one. But it sang perfectly, and the unknown girl’s voice acted as a choir of its own, with thousands of sounds all folding together. The large black hole dissolved, and from its destruction, a knight – similarly deformed – descended like a god, brandishing divine punishments.
The little knight ravaged anything she touched and pushed inside enemy lines while protected by miniature versions of the colored creature Kanga had fought. Her heart stopped when she saw them all appear from nothing, but the carnage they created made her somewhat happy. She looked at Paimon, who was enraged by the constant death of his companion, and taunted him, "Hey, walking harps! I can’t seem to hear your music with all those screams. Is your master also as off-tune as you?"
Paimon, upon hearing this insult on his master, was enrage. He didn’t care if his musical talent was said to be lacking but there was no better harp player or singer than his master. This was the thing that made him angry above anything else, and he commanded a thousand burning metal chains to assault the knight and her summons. As for the singing girl and the sky of red, they were both locked in a confrontation with the choir.
Kanga, recognizing that only the knight and herself could tilt the balance, joined the assault directly on Paimon but was stopped by his dromedary. At first, she thought nothing of this beast with a lame face but soon found herself inside an illusory world made of burning sand. In the distance, the animal looked at her as if she was an insect and disappeared behind a dune. She tried to streak across the sand with her lightning speed but found nothing behind the dune other than yellow sand. She was locked up in this place, no matter where she went.
Back in the real world, Paimon’s chains had captured the large worm with a thousand teeth. They burned its flesh and tore its muscles as it screamed in pain like a child lost at sea. The knight tried to cut the chains, but her attempt did nothing to free the creature. Instead of helping, the chain tried to get her also in a bind, which was only blocked by a small cavalry of black ridders.
An owl flew by and entered the musician’s body, but he simply responded by laughing and ripping his flesh like a drape to uncover a body of pure white light with a fleshy horned head. He was simply unaffected by the attack, and instead, the owl caught fire and disappeared into ashes.
Then, from the red clouds, came the snake-like dragon. The heat rose and rose as it came collapsing on the earth like a meteor to doom all life. It razed close to the ground and flew at an undistinguishable speed over the battlefield while raising heat and spewing poison. But soon, the knight understood that this was a useless attack, as only the poison managed to make a few of their foes sick. And even then, Paimon played a particular melody that caused everyone ill to be forcefully sacrificed and used into one powerful spell.
"Let Hell and Heaven collapse into one!" called Paimon, as this time, a true scorching heat descended while pulling people up. Unlike Kanga’s small stars, what Paimon had done was to pull the sun ever closer to the planet. It was as if hell had come up on earth. The fleshy red sky was slowly burning to show the flaming ball growing ever larger.
Paimon’s forces smiled at the sight as they were unaffected by the heat – it even seemed to strengthen them – and they all sang and fought harder. The beast of green was quickly overwhelmed, as if the heat was burning his soul, and he disappeared without a trace. His death was quickly followed by that of the giant worm, who was crushed by the chains and left to rot – a rot that spread quickly and exploded into a million white owls.
Seeing how hopeless the situation was, the demon with ten heads let out a shout that froze time. The carnage had completely ceased, but he still walked gravely toward a wisp of lighting stuck inside a dream. He placed a hand on the frozen streaks of violet and let out another shout. It did nothing – at least for now, as time had yet to restart. He took a deep breath before looking at the small knight he had followed for a long time. This little knight born from Change… He knew that he wasn’t meant to be by her side forever, as he himself hadn’t changed in a long time. He had reached his limit long ago and simply existed. Thus, the orange demon let out a heavy sigh and glanced at the sun. Someone had to take care of it, and none of his companions could… maybe they would all die like the Green and the Blue did…
The demon let out another shout, which made time move again, and he then jumped high in the sky toward the sun. A large indent was left in the ground as everyone fighting was pushed away. They all looked up to see the figure disappear, and a few seconds later, a shout came to them, followed by an impossible darkness: the sun had disappeared from the sky together with the demon…
Paimon and his forces were shocked and confused at what had happened, but soon fear devoured them as a purely black cavalry managed to go deep into their lines and cut them open.
The table was turned, but it wasn’t without a cost. The gigantic yellow rabbit had also disappeared along with the orange demon since there was no light for it to use as a reflection. It was quickly impaled during the fight as it couldn’t use its full power. As for the red bird, a large net of chain was cast by Paimon and since it couldn’t see them, died after being crushed. Lastly, with the disappearance of the sun, the long dragon became tired and was cut open after falling asleep. It was simply too cold for it to live.
The only ones that survived were the black cavalry, the owls constantly finding corpses to reborn, and the small knight. As for Kanga, the shout of the demon had broken the illusory world, but she still needed to slay the dromedary to escape. It took her time to kill it as it could disappear and reappear wherever and when she did, she woke up to complete darkness with only a few lights here and there.
She didn’t really know what had transpired but understood she needed to fight, and fight she did. She quickly painted the land violet and left no chance for Paimon to block her attack, which killed more than half of his forces.
She landed down next to the knight with a misshapen figure and called out to her, "I’ll divert his attention while you find a way to slay him."
"Hm," approved the knight.
Again, Kanga painted the sky violet with lightning, which was blocked by Paimon producing a protective dome of chains. But while he was focused on the sky, the small knight managed to rush to him and sever his head. He fell to the ground without a word able to escape his lips… The remaining forces were quickly cleaned up by the cavalry and the owls.
"Ready for round two," said Kanga, standing above a mountain of corpses and pointing at the sky, where a cluster of stars was quickly descending. She recognized that familiar sight as the same god who had given her immortality. "When all is done and all the gods or demons have been killed, will you stay by my side as I return life to this world?"
✿❀✿
Kanga… That great sorceress said this to me… to I, unneedy of a name. May I be called the moon in the heaven, or the child of the mortals, or I a change eternal… It was a loneliness like no other that made me stay by her side as I needed her and clung to this sorceress for deer hope to be recognized and be like her kind. And it’s this loneliness that makes me sick to my soul, stuck in a pervasive darkness all alone and contemplating my own death. Not long ago, I said that only death would free me, but what would happen if my memories went missing and I forgot that someone asked and pleaded to me – to I. I hate this; it makes me sick! I can’t! I don’t want to think anymore! I can’t! I ca…………………………….
