Everything & Nothing

the blood moon prophecy

The hooded man treaded past the double doors to the museum's Hall of Uncategorized Relics, walking by artefact after artefact until he finally found the one he'd been looking for. The IstuiVitae; or as his brotherhood called it—The Chalice of Calamity.

It was near closing hours and the museum was mostly empty with the guards and the rest of the staff busy locking up the Halls. He'd have to hurry before they came round to this room, for the Blood Moon's fourth eclipse was almost reaching its totality; the last eclipse of a tetrad—each spaced six full moons apart, coming around once a hundred millennia—was ascending unto completion. The timing was perfect; nothing to distract him as he performed the rituals, the air inundated with omens of the Prophecy, the moon shone an eerie scarlet and painted the sky a murky red. Tonight, he would fulfil his noble destiny and earn a place in the Supreme Creator's lap; he'd be hailed as a redeemer of the human race—not by the common, plebian humans for they lacked gratitude and failed to recognize true greatness, but definitely by the elevated humans of his sacred brotherhood, called Sospes Superii. An occult society whose sole goal of existence was the fact that they'd be the ones to bring about a chance of redemption every time humans became corrupt beings. This was one such time—a prosperous occasion indeed; a new beginning in the making.

Tonight is the night, Apollo. The night of rebirth, he told himself as he overstepped the railing and opened the glass case. Thankfully, the IstuiVitae being uncategorized, its age, importance, and value unknown, the security around it was pretty loose hence making his job easier. Apollo walked to the middle of the large chamber and bent down to the floor. Reaching into his coat pockets, he brought out the items necessary for performing the summoning ritual—a red marker, a sprig of thyme, the offshoot of a two century old birch, a block of hematite, the skull of a baby born dead, and the bone marrow harvested from a black cat sacrificed under a poplar in the eve of the winter solstice. With the marker, he drew the ceremonial altar; three circles on the vertices of a triangle and a fourth one in the middle touching its trio of surrounding compatriots. He kept the Chalice at the center of the triangle and put in the marrow, the herb and the branch occupied the western circle, the rock and cranium sat on the east corner, whereas the north vertex remained empty.

Without sparing another second, the male brought out a small volume bound in black velvet, on the front cover of which was an embossment; two S's of silver, the tail of the first one curling around the head of the second—the Sospes Superii's insignia. He turned the pages of the book, pausing on the subpoena mantra, glancing it through before beginning the sacramental chanting. First two stanzas of Latin words spoken in a low baritone, nothing happened. Then came the third intonation coupled with a complication in the ritual. Apollo procured the small dagger he kept strapped around his right calf, and with it he sliced open his left wrist, taking care not to dig in too deep. The only sign of the pain he felt was a slight waver in his hymning voice. The maroon fluid gushing out of the laceration in rivulets was fed into the IstuiVitae while the Latin incantations kept flowing from his lips.

The atmosphere crackled with electricity and the room turned dark as the lightbulbs flickered a little, then completely went out; it was time. Apollo felt the air around him change and involute, the objects and walls of the room became part of a warped dimension as the space-time continuum twisted and bent like a vehicle that had gone through a metal compressor; and then again, everything expanded out of shape, everything moved vertiginously—relevance of any logic of material existence was made peccadillo. The altar floated up, thyme and skull and everything, with the red marks becoming glowing lines, and Apollo's sanguine essence in the Chalice of Calamity began effervescing like bog water on a humid, summer night. The beginning of the end, leading forth to yet another epoch of creation and novel life; the hour was here.