Apocrypha Discordia

[The Wizard Joseph]

I'm doing my best to "keep the faith" with OTSGE and intend it as my first major contribution to the Discordian mythos. I'll try to get it finished up. I'm half way done with the writing of pt4 and been holding onto the rest of the story in my head for too long. When I post it I'll open a new thread. This particular thread title is already taken and I'd just as soon get 1-5 into one thread by themselves.

[Brother Mythos]

So, how's the writing progressing?

[The Wizard Joseph]

So, how's the writing progressing?

It's pretty much done in my head. I've made progress on pt 4 and will have it done soon. My week wound up being busier than I had expected, but I have the next three days or so pretty much to myself.

I will keep you posted..

Thanks for your interest! 

[The Wizard Joseph]

This is the complete form. Might change a few things yet, but here ya go!

On the Secret Genesis of Eris, part 4

It had been twenty three days. Twenty three dark and terrible days passed after Zeus went upward into the endless sky, arrayed for battle in his father's finest armor and upon the last functioning chariot of a Titanic era long since ended, seeking to bring an end to Nyx's mischief.  Zeus had ordered all of the gods under his hospitality to enter into his lofty palace upon Olympus and not to leave, if they valued their existences, until his swift return, save only his brothers Poseidon and Hades. Their abodes beneath wave and soil were quite secure. Knowing their brother, in wisdom they had willfully remained in their own places, and even as Zeus had hurtled ever upwards into the darkening heavens a storm like no other before or since enveloped this ancient world.

To call it merely "a storm" is truly a disservice.
The storm is perhaps fitting.
The storm that filled every part of the sky with lightning and thunder and water and cruel winds.
The storm that shook the mountains and rivers  into new places as even steadfast Atlas groaned and shifted from the impossible force of it.
The storm that covered the world in ruin and buried ancient titanic wonders beneath new-formed seas and mountains alike.
The storm that caused dauntless Helios himself to hide his face for twenty days; and three more in the horrific silence that followed,
just to be sure.

The storm whose darkness froze
all things upon the ground and slew
vast numbers of beasts and plants,
and also nearly slew all humanity,
for warning none had been given..

Now in darkness and silence, Hera, great queen of the gods, stood alone on the private balcony upon which she and Zeus had seen uncountable evenings become mornings. She had stood in this very place with him shortly after final victory over the Titans had been wrought.

Zeus had sworn to her profusely during the war that no more beautiful creature existed than she. The astute young goddess had soon noted that his praise, and often highly assertive affections, were always and only granted during the day as their band of siblings had journeyed ever on in their fateful quest. Hera had seen his gaze lingering upon unreachable Nyx countless times as they made camp in diverse locations on the seemingly endless marches.

He didn't sleep, she'd seen.
He'd look up towards Nyx.
Laying on the ground, yet,
Up and his steel... ready
Yet not Hera's

To assure herself of truly immortal fealty, and in ill-advised and youthful spite, Hera bade Zeus swear until she was satisfied that she herself was the most beautiful being he had ever seen.  She demanded that The King of The Gods declare her superior beauty loudly in eternal oath before Nyx, HERSELF. Zeus knelt in otherwise private, but fervent, plea to Hera to be his great queen. He turned his face upwards and before both of their faces declared so until Hera took him as husband forever.

Five times over,
So did proud Hera bid
Young King Zeus, in glory
To swear thus facing Nyx
Only then did she accept.

And now the bitch had her fool husband, and Hera had far indeed to fall.
During The Storm the gods had all remained sufficiently cowed by the terrible power of it. In the three days of silence following where Helios yet hid his face much had been whispered, and within her own house wise Queen Hera missed nothing. Some believed Zeus dead, but Hera certainly knew otherwise. No, her unaging eyes could not see any sign of Zeus in the empty, impossibly dark vault above her, but Hera was a queen among gods and had other senses far more reliable than even her godlike vision. The Storm had passed, but her immortal spirit would surely know had her eternal husband Zeus, somehow, passed with it.

He was up there,
somewhere,
clearly spent
yet still spending,
far beyond his due.

And so Hera glared at the empty vault,
wondering, as ever wise wives should,
"What has that idiot of mine gotten into?"

Now again, all in one moment, she could sense his return, not in glory but by a secret way that was then known only to the royal pair, a relic wrought by mad Kronos himself, and that only he who was king could open. One that led instantly, from anywhere, to their chambers directly. It was never to be used, and before then had never been by any but the fallen Titan king, and some few times since in infrequent experiment by brave Zeus, while she and he privately played with their new-won spoils from the personal chambers of their wretchedly mad God-king father, and after which he never spoke of it to Hera again. It was the only thing Hera had ever seen Zeus seem to truly fear.

This was not the plan. None of it could be.
Something was terribly, terribly wrong.

Hera, turning with the sense of her king's presence,
Saw not the grand array nor proud stature of Zeus
Instead a wretched and ruined form from shadows
Did lurch forward and in mad frenzy fell upon Hera.
Zeus' flesh, but not mind, nor bearing, nor even might
Sought to subdue the Queen of Olympus, and failed.
No longer did Hera see her husband Zeus, instead
Only a weak and mewling form of withered flesh
And mind unable to order itsself, much less Olympus

This would not do.
She needs her king.
Instead a wretched
Broken thing, Zeus was.

Into the specter
of his foul father,
Into a form as that
Of horrid, old Kronos,
Zeus was now changed.

[The Wizard Joseph]

I want to get this last part out and get some feedback if possible. It's done, but I'm not fully satisfied with it just yet. Here's the main body of part 5 as it stands and an odd aside from the Narrator I'm unsure what to do with exactly in the post after that. It's very nearly done after something like 4 years. It may never some polish yet in telling, but here's the tale complete.

OSTGE pt5 Eris & Ares

And now the time for the final act of this terrible tale has at long last  come due.

In the smoothly formed and powerful arms of young Queen Hera lay her great King Zeus. In form and spirit Zeus had now become a ruin fit to match the world he had for so long ruled and that he had now devestated totally. In brazenly, foolishly seeking to overwhelm and subdue dread Nyx and seize her and her immeasurably vast realm beyond the eternal vault of the sky for his own, Zeus did indeed strive upon Nyx for twenty days with force enough to sunder the sky and mountains, spill the great oceans themselves, and bring darkness, cold, and death to every part of the world.

When at last Zeus' wind had faded
and his last thunderbolts been spent
and his father's chariot left far behind
in his foolish pursuit of vexatious Nyx
who for many days was in his mighty grasp
and endured all Zeus' lustful fury unbowed
the great king's strength had finally faded
and Zeus could truly strive on Nyx no more
then did crafty, ancient Nyx hold Zeus fast
in arms that saw all the greatest predators
from lost and uncountable ages fall to dust
long before Zeus's father had ever reigned.

Zeus had become Nyx's prisoner in that moment. Were he to remain in her realm long enough to recover his strength and break free it would clearly be far too late to claim any victory. Should Nyx simply choose to cast him down in inglorious and humiliating defeat his very throne would be broken and his kingship most likely ended forever. Nyx knew this all too well and set to Zeus her demand in exchange for his freedom and his kingdom's future. She demanded that Zeus grant her his royal essence with which to make for herself divine offspring of his line. This was something which only the King of the Gods could produce, for only the king can make a new god, and this power was the sole right of Uranus, then fell Kronos, and now Zeus alone. Zeus had little choice, but was still the King, and demanded in return three great concessions of Nyx for the privilege of the one thing that she couldn't take from him as she held him and his kingdom's future tightly in her arms.

Zeus demanded that there be only one such child and that the product of his seed would be his alone, and not Nyx's, to raise as he saw fit.

Nyx agreed with a smile.

Zeus demanded also that Nyx never again directly enter or otherwise  meddle in the affairs of his realm unless he as King gave her leave to do so.

Agreement to this stung dark Nyx's pride.

Zeus demanded last of all that Nyx should be silent forever after, and insisted that this was the most important part of the deal, for he could not long be king were his queen to ever know what had transpired between he and Nyx to win his freedom.

Nyx swore her vengeance, for this meant that she would never again converse with bright Helios, then agreed.

And so as King of the Gods Zeus gave his consent.

In his profound exhaustion and well founded confidence in his might Zeus had not specified in the agreement two important details most vital indeed. The king forgot to state how much of his essence Nyx could take and in what manner, knowing only his youthful anticipation of her finally relenting to him in order to receive her due prize. Indeed even as Nyx began to draw back her starry veil for the first time Zeus had not yet understood the danger until it was upon him, and far too late. The horror beyond Nyx's veil struck out and seized Zeus's body, rending his armor and finding purchase upon and within his flesh as Zeus' startled cry fell suddenly silent and he was dragged deeper yet into Nyx's truly abyssal realm. Not a sound was heard thereafter while for the best part of three days Nyx took her prize from Zeus's desecrated body as the king lay paralyzed in a nightmare laden fugue.

When finally his senses returned to him Zeus had lost more than half of his own being and strength in the exchange and had only one remaining failsafe left to him, lest Nyx take all essence from the young upstart godling-king, and so slay him, and thus nullify the price of their bargain, and gain unlimited power over all things in the Cosmos, forever.

Kronos had in the height of his power and ageless reign built a wonder able to return him to his palace from anywhere in the cosmos, but it came with a price that only an immortal being could ever conceivably pay. The device left one in a featureless null zone for a great amount of time that increased considerably with greater distance traveled. To cross a room to the device's homing point had seemed to  Zeus in his first fleeting experiment with the enigmatic device like a month's long march without any entertainment. This being not of any great concern, but peculiar and not particularly pleasing to endure the effect intrigued Zeus enough to travel for a month to test it again at greater distance. This was worse beyond measure and outright unpleasant, and so he simply never bothered with it again because it had felt like a wasted century, then to him still a meaningful measure of time better spent in revelry. Zeus had brought it with him on his journey only to appease Hera and better assure himself of her open support for his endeavor. It was now the only means available to him of returning to Olympus.

Zeus commanded his withering flesh to obey him once again and wrenced his arm from the grip of Nyx upon and within it and reached within the remnants of his armor to trigger this last hope. And so in that instant was delivered from cruel Nyx and into a torment of a very different sort as the full distance he had traveled was greater than a mere month's march in way that the oceans are greater than a bucket of water. Though traumatized already the full weight of the Ages that had undone the very mind of his mad father Kronos came down upon great Zeus even as his body instantly reappeared in the halls of Olympus before his great Queen Hera.

And now a great secret must be told.
Gods may never truly die,
But they may weaken
and thereby grow old.

But the bond between
The King and Great Queen
Is ageless and their power
As two is greater still
Than either individually
And so victories may be won.

Even when there is little but desperate measures left to be taken.

And so the troubled mind and ruined flesh of Zeus was all that Hera had left of her King, but this was enough for her to give her own heart's essence and hearth's warmth to restore. And even as Zeus' body healed and her own withered in exchange and his mind began to return he took more still of here and in their entwinement said to her only that they must make War. And so in a confusion of madness and terror and passion and agony and even love, such as gods may anyway, was the essence of Ares, who is War and whose name means Ruin, conceived within Hera. And in the aftermath of this conception Zeus told her of the "treaty" with Nyx saying only that she had deceived him and nearly slain him, but that when the child arrived it must be Hera's in all but secret circumstance as much as Ares who even now swelled within her. Hera knew well that it meant their kingdom and so swore as lover and Queen to Zeus that it would be so forever and kept for herself the right to name the child when it arrived.

The gods of Olympus knew nothing but that Zeus had returned in victory though exhausted and desiring private time with his queen. Much was whispered when Hera was seen with child in her belly when she came forward on occasion to transmit Zeus' will that they all stay in their places and pay somber reverence to his hard-won victory over Nyx until he should so choose to present himself in open court. The intention of the royal pair was to present both children as twins at this time, but neither knew how long it would be before the titan Nyx would deliver this child to them. Indeed the birth of Ares was said to be a lengthyand arduous affair indeed as the birthing cries of Hera could be heard throughout Olympus and beyond into the now cold and desolate world. Since Zeus' return Helios had refused his duties and nothing of Nyx' glory was in evidence. Then suddenly in the bedchamber where Ares had already been born for some time Nyx's servant Skiá did appear and render to Zeus a perfectly formed female godling whom Hera did immediately take to her bosom and name Eris as the child immediately began to struggle greatly and cry out loudly, which set her brother Ares also to wailing. And so these did mighty Zeus and Hera present before the others upon Olympus even as their own countenances had become aged and their spirits hardened no god would make mention of this and rather simply paid homage to the new offspring and received Zeus' orders as to their role in setting the world back into proper order again.

For now Strife and Ruin
Eris and Ares both were
The new way of things
Yet once more in time
All had changed

[The Wizard Joseph]

Here's the weird bit of whatever it is...




Dear reader know that this simple and silly mortal's tale consists of but the least of the truth, yet it is founded in more than mere conjecture of the doings of terrible, tyrannical beings long dead and forgotten, for they are from us and of our minds' substance, as surely as we are of our own parents' flesh and living souls, and so even our gods are made in our own image and nature. So long as we yet live and breathe them life from the sacred and oftimes awful power of a dream dreamt becoming a tale told they will be teachers about ourselves in return, and in this way they have real substance through us.

Know also that the truth is up to we mortals to determine,
as ever it was and shall remain, and that no god has power enough to ever take this one thing from you should you be wise enough to keep it close to you, and also remember always that grim mortality is not so very bad and trade it for any false and pernicious promise of a more perfect forever.

For to live forever is to suffer forever as well.
And so come to know the true mass of a star
in trade for their innocent and pretty sparkle.
In life forever the unspeakable, holy vastness
of limitless heavens becomes a cage far darker
than the deepest and most vile pit in all Tartarus,
A vastness so beyond the pale that an immortal,
being powerful beyond measure,
could still get lost in it
and so wander blind.
Forever.

And so this remember humankind:

BEING FOREVER
MEANS BEING
FOREVER ALONE.

Mortality does have it's upside.

[The Wizard Joseph]

Bump to find easily on a friend's computer later. Gonna print off copies of Adonis: The Real Story and the completed Secret Genesis of Eris to show folks. Hope you guys enjoyed these!