Magic in the Flesh

 Here is what we all agree upon:

There are three forms of magic. Generative magic, whose patron is Lady Rachayha [she who birthed the Flesh and carves life from bone], Perpetuative magic, whose patron is Lord Rahayan [he who is chained in the bowels and weeps the world’s blood], and Annihilation magic, whose patron is Lord Rahavesh [they whose eyes smoulder with fire and are blood-sworn to slay the Flesh in the Final Days].

In the Final Days, when Rachaya and Rahavesh lock eyes, she will draw her needle and hammer, and they will draw the reaping scythe. The Flesh will writhe, its muscles will tear and its flesh will bloat and rend. In these throes of death, Rahayan will be unbound from his chthonic incarceration. The Lord of Preservation will have to make a choice as to whether he will stand with Rachaya or Rahavesh, and by his allegiance seal the flesh of the Fate, whether it be preserved or razed.

It is generally believed that the Final Days will happen on the eve of we don't want to alarm anyone but they’re happening right now. When you sully the names of the Triumvirate on your lips to invoke their magics, it brings that day ever closer as you acknowledge the terrible truth of the massacre to come, or perhaps keeps it at bay as you pull their grim power away from them.

Here is what we disagree upon they are wrong about:

The Suid Chain believes that the Flesh is boundless, its corpulent warrens stretching to the ends of reality, and, for the matter, that there is no afterlife; this is all that there is. To this end, the Chain (irresponsibly) preaches reckless hedonism to its worshipping body, the icon of the pig representing their ideal unending gluttony and sloth. They claim Rot is Rahavesh’s work, an attempt to unmake the infinite Flesh from the inside out. But what do they care of it? Their flames will be long extinguished by the time the Rot has done its foul work.

The Ravagers’ fundamental crime is the excessively liberal application of the predator-prey dialectic. They believe Flesh is a mammoth apex predator who swallowed our fathers’ fathers’ fathers long ago, and only by honing their capacity for death (like their totem, the bear) through any means necessary do they have a hope of escaping into another world, be it beyond the Flesh or into the predator’s afterlife. Extremist sects believe in reincarnation, and thus see no way of escaping the Flesh save a mass purging, securing their seat in the Court of Beasts. They believe that the Rot is Rahayan’s artifice, an attempt at balancing life and unlife, predator and prey. Some extremists boldly claim that the attempt was successful.

We know naught of the Winding Coils, save that they are also sadly misguided. As a word of advice, if you see a painted or branded insignia of a snake clutching an orb in its maw, watch your back and ask as few questions as you can muster.

Here is what is, despite what they say:

The Flesh is a great and unfathomable beast that dwells in an even greater and more unfathomable land of blinding light. We are part of its microbiome, aiding it in its digestion and homeostasis through the nature of our lives. However, through meditation and study, we may enlighten ourselves to escape this inherent cycle of labor and glimpse a truer purpose.

The world of light, the Outside, is a world that is more real than our own- while we survive sleeping in the Flesh, glimpsing the Outside would complete us in some way we could not fathom with our fettered minds. However, the latent knowledge of the Outside is buried deep in our collective psyche, it simply needs a canvas upon which to be unleashed. Our oracles have declared that there is or was or will be a Gastrolith somewhere within the Flesh; an artifact from the Outside with the potential to unlock our latent knowledge.

We perch at the edges of that which is and feed passively and invisibly off its scraps, like our chosen emblem, the gnat. We meditate and try to carve truths we find within our minds onto calculi. We seek to reunify with the Akashic Record, and the Outside, through the Gastrolith we seek. Our mission is the truth of our purpose for being, and you too can occupy our Ghost and aid us in our search for enlightenment. Talk to a recruitment officer today, and remember, the password is don’t just publish the password, you buffoon!.

(The Rot, of course, is Rachaya’s mutated and least favorite child, trying to strangle its greater sibling out of jealousy and hatred. It is to curb the Rot’s rage that Rachaya will be incited to pick up her hammer and needle and begin the End Times, so have our oracles foretold.)

-Excerpt from the first draft of a flashily-decorated pamphlet called “So you wish to be a member of the Hyper-Obtuse Ghosts?”, found inside of a moderately-sentient fatberg in the Capillaries