On New Year’s Eve, the people of the City prepare themselves for a celebration, unaware of the danger--never guessing that more than just a year might be ending.
The eikone Chronos, Father Time, lies near death. His hounds howl in their tesseract kennels and his imbonded servants, the bumbling giants of old chaos, Gog and M’Gog, blubber at his bedside. The old man--the old year--will die at the stroke of midnight.
In the Heavens, the angels gird for war. They double the host in shining panoply that guard the Celestial Gates and patrol the ramparts of paradise. They prepare for possible siege.
In the streets of the world, the soldiers and made men of the Hell Syndicate push bullets into magazines and check the action of their guns nervously. There’s the scent of blood and brimstone in the air. There may be war in the streets.
At the final collapse at the end time, the last singularity pulses omninously. It's vibration plays the funeral dirge of the cosmos; negative energy propagating backwards through time. The beat carries the slavering existence-haters of the Pit and the mad form-refuseniks of the Gyre dancing into the world for one last party.
The material plane draws, moment by moment, closer to the knife-edge of continuation and dissolution. And the clock ticks down.
(to be continued?)
8 comments:
Yikes! I shudder to think what will happen in The City when the Mayan calendar runs out...
In the City, do the clocks really tell the time...
...or do they gently whisper it.
Who wins?
The Fans!
@Sean - Good question!
@scottsz - Well...most of them just tell time. :) Gotta be careful where you shop.
@Booberry - Heh! I suspect will get some sort of resolution on New Years Day.
Tres bien! Very nice post, full of vivid imagery.
Nice work Trey! Happy New Year!
Very nice. Thank you.
Did you ever read Susan Cooper's Dark is Rising books? Full of strange portents and unfilmable numinous feelings; the titular volume was concerned with just such a secret battle for the new year - which happens on 12th night.
I must've read them at an impressionable age: 12th night is still my favourite moment of the winter holiday, although since I no longer live in England (as Cooper no longer did when she wrote them) I can't justify looking out of the window for a glimpse of the Wild Hunt.
@Richard - I've certainly heard of Cooper's books, though I think there real buzz in the U.S. came after I was out of juvenile (or more likely, considered myself to old to read such). I think it's probably prudent o keep an eye out for the Wild Hunt at such times. Never can be too sure. ;)
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