A Rain of Dreams – Part 3

So.  Times, they are interesting.

First and foremost: Nazis are bad.  Super, duper bad.  Alt-Right and White Nationalism are another word for Nazis.  Blood and Soil is antisemitism, and waving a Nazi flag is a call to action.  Calls to action are not protected under the first amendment.  Do not attempt to justify, rationalize, or tolerate people who act in this manner.  Hundreds of millions of lives were lost in WWII because of radicalized young men fed a steady diet of hatred and nationalist pride.  DO NOT REPEAT THIS.

Cannot stress that enough.  The fact that I have to sit here, as an adult in the year of our lord 2017, and remind people that NAZIS are the bad guy is pretty indicative of our current social and political environment.  The former Grand Vizier of the KKK should not be in your corner, thanking you.  Ugh.

Alright, necessary clarifications out of the way, it’s been a rough week.  I’ve been in a bad place mentally, beating myself up for not finding a job which pays well.  It’s a better job environment than it has been in awhile, but I’m still fighting against individuals with a masters and tons of experience for a job paying 12 an hour with no benefits.  It’s rough.

On the book front, I’ve struck a more strident tone on self-promotion.  I have always wanted my work to do the promoting for me, and in many ways, it has.  Everyone who I know and work with on my writing has had nothing but good things to say.  My growth has been evident, my word choice and character development only sharpening as time has gone by.  I’ve impressed men and women who are not easily swayed, all of whom have a deep literary pool of read works.  That’s not nothing.

However, I need to toot my own horn.  Since I have changed tactics, I have nearly quadrupled my site hits, and have brought more reads to my work on Amazon.  I’m also branching out.  My good friend Dr. Matt Scrivner, whose vocal chords create melodic wonders, has agreed to work on my Audible reading.  Another of my good friends has agreed to do the editing.  He is also the wonder behind the Channel 3 Podcast, which will continue getting episodes here soon.  All in all, I’ve become far more aggressive about my career as an author.  It is not going to magically show up on my doorstep.  So I must grab my machete, and hew it from the wild thicket by main force.

Without further Tarzaning…

A Rain of Dreams – Part 4

Heaven couldn’t save all of us.  That was the bitter truth we learned the day Hell came home to roost.  In the end, humanity has only one place left to call home.  My teachers at the Academy of Blades say it used to be called Australia.  Now?  Heaven insists that it be called Eden.

Eden is no paradise, however.  Because Heaven was forced to intercede on our behalf, they decreed that mankind no longer had the right to govern itself.  Instead, we were given the new commandments.  Breaking any one of them resulted in Penance.  Most of the time, Penance resulted in death.  No one broke the commandments.

The First Commandment is to Obey thy Lord and Her Angels.

This meant every time there was a new decree, or a new battle plan, our job was to shut up and do what we were told.  We could offer input, but most often, there wasn’t much to change.  Humanity had lost most of the Earth: Our targets were nearly limitless, and our missions highly flexible.

The Archangel Gabriel had fallen on Hell Day, acting as the vanguard for the survivors and remaining angels as we made our way to Eden.  His blood fell on the soil of Eden, sanctifying it and causing it to bloom forth all manner of vegetation.  Areas of Eden which had only been desert before his death were now verdant forests and vast plains, cared for by his blood, nurtured by his sacrifice.

Each afternoon, I trained with the other sanctified blades in the Yard.  Michael, his grizzled visage marred with one eye missing, was our master of arms.  Each day, he taught us how to wield the swords of divine vengeance.  As each angel had fallen to the hordes, the Archangels had retrieved their weapons whenever possible, gathering them as though they were precious beyond price.  It turns out, like so many things, they were frustratingly correct.

I remember meeting my Morningsong when I was eighteen and had been accepted into the academy.  It was my first day, and instead of training or meeting our teachers, I met my blade.  Michael barked orders at the recruits, and forced us to march to the Armory.  A vast building, four stories high, was basically a library for the weapons of angels.  Swords, knives, glaives, halberds, axes… the list was endless.  If it had a blade and had been devised by the minds of man, it was present a hundred-fold in the Armory.

Each had a name, each a history spanning hundreds, if not thousands, of years.  To add to that, the blades themselves were sentient.  Not possessed of true intelligence, but able to react and adapt on their own, aiding the wielder so that they went from highly trained warrior to a literal agent of God.  What they didn’t tell us that day was the cost.  When I saw my Morningsong, I felt a vibration so strong within my mind and soul that the innocuous white claymore hanging on it’s rack rocked as well.

Without thought, my hand reached out towards her.  I could no more have stopped it than I could’ve stopped an avalanche.  When I gripped the hilt, music washed over me.  It was so loud I couldn’t hear myself think.  I also couldn’t hear myself scream.  Pain followed the song, a twisting serpent wrapping itself around my body and my soul at once.  It was agony unlike anything I had known could exist.  After what felt like eons, it was over.  I lay on the floor, gasping and retching, which is when I caught a glimpse of the hand that had grasped Morningsong.  It was a bright silver, etched with a vivid neon blue in symbols I had never seen but at once understood.  It was her name, inscribed upon my flesh just as she had etched herself on my spirit.  I knew too, without knowing how, that she would inhabit both until my death.

So each afternoon, Michael trained us to wield the weapons woven into our souls.  It was hard work.  Weapons with a mind of their own required an equally firm mind to command them.  We had to learn how to work together, how to anticipate the moves of the other.  Angels had centuries to master this craft.  A sanctified blade had two.  And as it turns out, I would only have two weeks.

Bladefully,
Justin