Levithan

An out door stage.  Across it walk twenty players, dressed in white.  The Sun sets in the background, shooting orange rays over the sky.  The orange digs through The blue black sky.

They speak.

Chorus -  Woe and mourning, these are what we have for you unfortunates.  Hang your hopes on your fears and your fears on your hopes.  Turn it all around again, once again, reverse, reverse reverse.  It is your duty to fail and our duty to watch and remember.  Foul bodies make foul stories but if it is the story that has unfolded, it is the story we must tell.  We weak few bow.

The Gods war, the Gods rage.  The great Powers converge and contract, clash and bend.  Emotion rips apart the fabric of the world, every gash a judgement.  Each power as its own justice.  All crying, ‘let me live’.  The immortal, the immortals, fight for life.

We follow one general, still beautiful, still gleaming, the as yet beautiful Leviathan, still armored in gold, still standing on two legs.  We cry because we know, we cry because we have seen, our champion, our creator, oh wail , oh repent.  All of us.  What beauty we have seen?  What beauty we have lost?

Pity us our remembrance and hold it dear.  Cherish this scar, celebrate this demise, applaud this fall.  Come with us, not because you journey, but because you are already here.  Open your eyes.

You open your eyes.

A great field of battle.  The armies of the gods advance in all directions.  Great towers of smoke higher than these oldest mountains branch upwards like trees filling out the canopy of black.  The sun blotted out, light springs from below, fires and rivers of lava.  You see more than you’ve seen before, both closer and further, every grain of sand counted, every path of thousands and thousands of soldiers mapped and followed.  Every individual shout is heard and the total din known, the world known slowed down to a crawl and sped up through eons.

One figure manages to shine through.  We watch Leviathan.

Leviathan -  All broken, all breaking, all flawed.  If only I was given the moment.  I know what is straight and what is bent, I have seen it, felt it, breathed it.  I am lost and alone only because I know I am not.  That vision keeps me dire company.  I’d throw it all away except ... except... except ... what?

Lackey -  My lord, you are needed on the battlefield.  The forces of Penden crash through our lines, they are a blade through grass.  The loss I have seen!  I would rip out my eyes if you had not need of them.  Quickly Lord, quickly.

Leviathan -  Don’t despair.  Look now, do you see our lieutenant among them?  There, on the midst of the highest waves.  Watch his sword move lightly and fall heavy.  Like a butterfly flitting through the soft air.  I wouldn’t take any of this victory from him.  He combs the field into smooth rows.  The tide will turn.

Lackey -  Why then the pain in your eyes?

Leviathan -  That is not for you, dear friend.  Do you remember from when you knew me?

Lackey -  From when I opened my eyes.  You have ever looked so bright, so good, so lovely. My memory, I reached up my hand out of new born weakness and you pulled me up.  I remember your soothing words as I fell, your encouragement as I have risen.  As humble as I am, you have always brought me with you.  I have always thought it a mistake.

But why now do you look so tired?

Leviathan -  Because my understanding has never been able to change a world growing rotten.  I have seen what was perfect, the perfect.  It is under the umbrella of the perfect that I brought you up, intended to bring you up.  And precisely it was because you were so humble I thought you would be one to share greatness.  And of what greatness you can share, you do.

Do you know what I would do if I were you?

Lackey -  I don’t even know what to do being me.

Leviathan -  I would run towards the edge of existence and wait there.  And yet you come running to me with conviction and without second thought.

Lackey -  I fall asleep and wake up trembling.

Leviathan -  My dearest friend, one day, if I am ever cursed with wisdom, I will follow you.

Lackey -  How is wisdom a curse?  Surely knowing is better than not?

Leviathan -  Just like that, your question shows my foolishness.  But we follow my whims to our mutual detriment.  We are still at battle.  How lies the field?

Lackey -  Below as you can see and surmised, we drive back the forces of Penden.  I was sure they would defeat us from the first wave.  But look how they fall now, not even bothering to rout.  Painful to watch and yet it bolsters my heart.

But do you see the far off mountain?

Leviathan -  Yes I see that hill, and its crawling skin of metal.

Lackey -  Yes, those are the warriors of Trey, our greatest obstacle to victory.  They started so small and without morale, but with every loss on every other field, their ranks somehow grow.  They are led by their lady Gretchen.  Sir?

Leviathan -  Don’t worry.  It’s a name that cuts me but its pain will lessen as I hear it.  I will need to hear it more before I meet her.

What makes their forces grow I wonder?

Lackey -  I have heard the soldiers gossiping about it, none I trust.  They say blood of the enemies flies up into the air and floats over to Gretchen’s mountain and form back into soldiers, dead eyed but powerful.  Others say the ground swallows them up, they are eaten by lava and reappear as metal golems three times taller than what they had been before.  And still others say that when the soldiers fall, their shadows don’t fall with them but stand upright and walk away towards that rippling mountain, laughing.

Leviathan -  And you believe none of it.

Lackey -  I snuck up on their camp during what serves for night, during what serves for sleep.  I got close enough to see them, and, nothing.  Nothing special, nothing different.  Just rows and rows of Gretchen’s soldiers as they have always been.  Each one as irregular but normal as the rest.  No dead eyes, no metal monsters, no walking shadows, just soldiers.

Leviathan -  That you risked yourself without my leave sticks in me, but your courage brings you closer to my heart.  My surety has no spine without your faith in our cause.

Lackey -  You hold me in such esteem, it baffles me.

I felt awful as I did it but saw a chance, a passing vaper inside of which I could hide.  I made a sound as I left their camp and alerted all watchful to me.  I escaped with some knicks and blows and due to a fortunate eruption of a rift in the ground between me and my pursuers.

But all this said, how do we stand up against their side?  It has grown to at least twice what we have and they are new, and rested, wherever they came from.

Leviathan -  Look now, down on the ground you had taken for lost.  What do you see there?

Lackey -  That great lieutenant, Paust, victorious.  He holds his head something like yours, I didn’t see it before.  Does the battle change even our bodies?

Leviathan -  It would seem so, you are right.  Though not exactly alike, there is something of me in him.  Something like the crest of a wave, something on the edge, they way they can look like a tear in the scenery.  You can’t see it can you Lackey?

Lackey -  I am cursed to only see what is in front of me I am afraid.  Some great imagination was never placed inside me.

Leviathan -  Maybe because it was placed too much in me.  But let’s not dance around with words.  Let’s go down to Paust, congratulate him on his past and curse him with his future.

Lackey -  We should hold no longer.  The pitch and heave of the day grows wild.