Death Masters
He found himself naturally moving into agreement with the worst that could be done in the Academy once he returned underground. Everything done below always seemed lesser after having spent time above, and so he was easily led into doing what the Academy’s demi-gods demanded for granting their big powers to people on Earth. The sky-gods’ pride demanded they be honoured with worship and acts of submission and sacrifice by earthlings, and they extended their influence at ground-level when people knelt to their effigies. Hamar easily went through the motions.
The students believed in the figurines and statues of the gods as if they were alive, but Hamar now knew how the connection to the gods worked: the look of the artefact always had a charm to it, enough to get a person to open up in the poetic, spiritual part of themselves, like wine-drinkers, and feel towards its wondrous presence as they looked at it, forging a spiritual connection the god could work through. Each clay or wooden idol of a deity had a resident invisible gatekeeper sitting in a little notch at the back, ready to seal the connection to the higher realms whenever a person wanted to ‘commune.’ A little fog of burnt incense and herbs, a sip of heady potion, and then it only took a person focusing on the statues, approaching through the smokey gloom to bow to them, presenting the sacrificial blood, meditating or chanting or dancing into a frenzy or maybe lovemaking in front of it, and then the idol’s ‘gatekeeper’ joined their spirit to the skies for an ecstatic thrill and a grant of power.
But all Hamar had to do now was attune himself to his memory of the Dionysian wine’s warmth and of the god behind any statue, and instantly his inner being opened up for a guaranteed gracing, – skillfully.
Symbolic deviations and vicious acts invariably followed, meant to spite any earthly hesitations still left in the students about doing as the gods wanted. Hamar joined in, seeing some merit in being able to defy paltry earthly constraints altogether. He and the others then readily channelled the entities through themselves. The Invisible Ones had more sway on the ground then, unstoppably, and their followers felt in on the unstoppability, – Hamar also, like a specially entitled veteran. At last the ‘gods” special favour toward him completed its work of growing unearthly pride in him and he threw himself open to receive all the benefits on offer!
He was at the end of nineteen, all things permissible, no consequence daunting to him after all the extremes he’d seen and all the mystic wine he’d drunk, – no wall of human decency he couldn’t get round. Deeper goblets of other wines were given him, and in the academy’s practices larger animals died while bawling terribly, his only concern being the catching of the blood and pouring out of the big basins to dash it all over the altars.
Thus Aktiarh had taken him under to it all by having him feel he was above it all, – in reality just short of insane! “Hamar Majus, Hamar Majus!” he insisted endlessly to himself, trying to get beyond every last former human standard he’d ever had.
He didn’t know it, but he was now ready for his initiation into temporary death under the elemental gods of Wind, Fire, Water. He had faith now, that the blood of sacrifices would buy his way through it, the most valuable blood coming from the highest sacrifices of all.
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