Tale As Old As Time – Part 1

I’m horrendously depressed. I’ve been battered beyond my ability to maintain myself due to circumstances outside of my control.

I hate every facet of my life; myself, my writing, and the fact that I keep breathing.  None of this will work.  All of this will fail, and no matter what I do, I will never be enough.

*gagging noise*

I think that’s the last of it.

Sometimes, if you try to hold all the poison within yourself, you’re going to have a bad time.  Let it out.  Let go of all the things that are weighing you down.  It’s not a fix.  None of the things I mentioned above have been solved by spewing them forth onto paper.  But it helps.  You can’t keep such things locked inside.  They’ll rot you as surely as any nuclear waste.  So, the solution is to continue to seek help, continue to medicate your conditions, and occasionally word-vomit the nasty bits out.

It gets better.  It gets less vile.  But some days it doesn’t feel that way, and I sympathize. 

If any of you need to talk about things like the above, I’m here.

Now then, story time.  I have no clue what I’m going to write, but that didn’t stop me Wednesday and it won’t stop me now.  I am a machine capable of churning out words when I otherwise shouldn’t be able to.  ALL WILL KNEEL BEFORE ME AND DESPAIR.

Tale As Old As Time – Part 1

The inward eye is my guide.  I am the master of myself.  I turn my gaze upon my soul and by it’s reflection I am strengthened.
                                            – Teachings of Vizjaya

Souls exist.  This was the central tenant of magicians.  Not all the world had believed that souls were real, not until Vizjaya had shown them The Way.  Not until the world had been pulled back from the brink of annihilation by her sacrifice.  World War III was a fading memory, and the Earth healed at a rate even the most optimistic Scientist or Vizard couldn’t have imagined.

Vizard.  Another thing humanity hadn’t been ready to believe in, hadn’t wanted to believe in.  Yet they were real. We were real.  And we had been with humanity since the beginning.  It wasn’t until Vizjaya though, that we had moved into the open.

At the dawn of civilization, vizards attempted to harness the power of the human soul.  Thoughts and practices became grouped into schools, which in turn hoarded their knowledge in libraries.  The largest of these, housing almost all the knowledge of millennia of study and application, was contained in Alexandria. 

Julius Caesar, a powerful Rhetorical vizard who hungered to rule undisputed, decided to use his seat at the height of Roman power to strike a blow against the other disciplines.  The fires set by the troops raged hot for three days as the library smoldered under Caesar’s heel.  In the end, only ash remained where once power had dwelt. 

The other schools, their authority waning as their masters took their knowledge with them to their graves, scattered to the winds.  Gone were the Abdaraxes, whose power birthed wonders unrivaled still.  The Hammurabites and their skills in wielding rules and law to forge mighty nations out of shepherd villages were lost in the fires of that horrible moment. 

There are moments in our shared history where scions of these schools of vizard can be seen.  The Magna Carta.  The Declaration of Independence.  All were muted whispers of once mighty rivers.

From the days of Caesar to the days of Vizjaya, however, it was the rhetoricians who retained power.  Seeping into positions in religion and government, they honed their abilities on increasing their secular or spiritual authority.  Gone where the Greecian vizards, who sought to enlighten and uplift with the force of their abilities. 

Here and there, a skilled yet untrained man or woman would harness latent abilities to do good in the world.  Dr. Martin Luther King, Malcom X, Susan B Anthony.  Those were but a few, and after Vizjaya’s martyrdom, historians and vizards combed through our collected history to honor those who struggled in silence to master their craft for the betterment of mankind. 

Yet there was one school which had been above all the others.  Dangerous, even before their scrolls had been turned to cinders, this school had only been practiced by a handful of men and women throughout all of time.

Vijaya had been the greatest.  And the last.

To be continued…

Vizardfully,
Justin