Melasurey: City of Gods

SCATTERED around the world are places of power, of magic. Some of these powers are of the light, and some of the dark. Powers of creation and powers of destruction. Neither good nor evil. Just raw power, twisting and curling with energy and chaos in its primal purity.

There are some unfortunate beings, creatures that pre-date civilizations that can sense, and track down these places of power. And if they wanted to, if they were willful enough, if they were cunning enough to deceive the molecules of life, if they were desperate enough, some of these beings would be able to steal the raw powers of the universe.

These people become greedy, though. After the first taste of unfiltered unadulterated magic flowing through their veins, they become violently addicted to the magic. They need it every moment of their lives, until their hunger consumes them from the inside, a horrible fire that starts from their hurts and ends in their ashes.

The city of Melasurey was one such place. One of the epicentric ones. It's the place where gods come to die, where demons and monsters crawl in the dark. It's the place where angels and devils meet in the intrigue of the night, and where men are NOT mortal. It's the place where gods are born, where light angels dance in the starlight.

*Jestar knocked on the shack door, his face stern and amused. It had been a long journey. But he was finally here. He sensed the wondrous things that were going on around him, but he couldn't see them. Not yet.

The shack was a mass of wood barely held together by nails and sweat. The door opened, just a bit at first, letting out a dim shine of red light. An old, old eye looked out from the gap. Jestar met the ancient eye with his own, squinting slightly, his lips curling to form a smile. The gap widened, and red light streamed out. The eye had disappeared, and the threshold was empty. Jestar felt the barrier tentatively and found no blocks. He persisted inside and sought his prize.

On the chair was a… creature. It was shaped like a baby, except it must have been mixed up in some other gene pool before coming into this world. Its deformed face crunched up, it's obscenely short legs lying uselessly on the chair. It had long hands; one of them was healthy but thin, and the other was just skin and bones. It was clothed in a huge rag dirtier than Jestar's shoe.

Despite appearances, Jestar smiled. And asked, “Is it here?”

Who could have thought the little creature could speak? But, it did. And it had a perfectly normal voice. “Yes, it is. Remember your word, Lord Jestar. I need it.”

The 'Lord' Jestar gave a frozen smile, “I don't go by that anymore. But, that's another story. I remember my words. All of them. You'll get what you want, you cheat.”

The creature ignored his last words, and simply nodded. It turned its face to one of the walls, and its eyes blazed red. A flick of the finger and several clicks of the tongue, and part of the wall was replaced with a door, runes covering it from head to toe, patterned lines and ancient symbols splattered all over.

Jestar waved a hand over the door, and everything THUD on it disappeared. As soon as the runes were gone, the doorframe began to THUD rattle, slowly at first but the shaking became more violent each moment. THUD THUD

Another wave stopped the rattling, and there was only a piercing silence in the air. Jestar opened the door and walked through, finally coming face to face with the thing he'd been searching for.

The doorway had opened to a large plateau, dusty and red. Lying on the dusty ground stretching from one horizon to the other was a great being on brink of utter rot. The air was filthy and foul, stagnant and dead. Quite unlike the god. He was being held down by a thousand thousand snakes, each longer and bigger than the last, and no matter how much the god struggled, they only tightened their tenacious hold.

There are gods born every second. If they're lucky, they get to die.

Jestar smiled viciously. He stepped closer to the great being, his body perfusing with dark light energy. “The moment of my triumph, old fraud. It's finally here.” Within moments, he was standing on top of its chest, a sword in his hand, its tip sharper than moonlight. “Vi Veri Mortuus Deux Vivus Vici.” By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the dead god. He liked making pop culture references. But nobody every seemed to get them.

The sword dug deep, and wound even deeper still. Had Jestar not silenced the god before coming in, he'd be short of two eardrums and a lot of blood vessels. The god screamed silently into the red night, and it was louder than the end of the world. The god power flowed out of the gaping wound, and into Jestar filling his soul with endless vitality. For a moment, just a little bit of the burning white flow of energy left through the place where the door had been. Jestar remembered his words.

Melasurey is the place where gods are born, where gods come to die, and where they're taken to be killed.

*The shack was no longer there- only rubble of wood and steel. Standing in front of it was a handsome woman no older than thirty winters. One of her hands was atrophied and bony. She held onto her rags with her healthy hand. Looking down on her damaged limb, she smiled. “Thank you, Lord Jestar.” Said the lady in rags to the night air. The only ones who heard her words were the light angels, and they were certainly chatty little creatures…

Melasurey is the city where nothing is true. And so, everything is possible…

By iDDQD

One is often assured after a nightmare that, “It's okay” and “It was only a dream” but as the science of psycho-neuro-immunology (PNI), which is the study of how the mind affects the neurological system which in turn influences the immune system, develops, dreams are gradually taking their place in the psychotherapy roster. PNI shows how the mind and body, thought in most of the world to be separate till the 20th century, are inextricably linked.

Our minds have an extremely powerful effect in strengthening our individual immune systems. Scientists now believe that if a person is upset, feeling dejected, depressed, and so on, the efficiency of the immune system is reduced and thus susceptibility to diseases is increased. People who have been treated for depression, and who were followed up five years later were found to have suffered twice as many heart attacks as those who had not, a clear indicator of how low mood can compromise good health. On the other hand, it is now fact that being loved and loving others stimulates our immune system and helps us fight off diseases. In the case of cancer for example, white blood cells can be stimulated to assemble against persistent cancerous cells. The way we live and how we manage our emotions influence mind, body and spirit.

The oldest medical book still in existence is believed to be The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine (2696 BC). In it, a section is dedicated to dreams and their connection to illnesses. Back then, medical consultation for any illness would most definitely include discussion about the patient's dreams.

In the Chinese system, health is believed to be harmony between the two forces yin and yang. Anything to upset this balance would bring disease and even death. Yang is the more active force- fiery, dry and hot; yin is the more passive- watery, wet and cool. According to this concept, to be healthy one must have a balanced yin and yang. Applying these ideas to dreams, the Chinese believed that dreams about wading through fearful waters indicate that 'yin is flourishing' and dreams of excessive water indicate too much fluid is present in the body (too much yin) and there is a lack of vital energy (too little yang).

In the 21st century researchers have observed dreams of drowning in great waters among heart patients whose water retention is excessive. It is now widely believed that in dreams we often see signals about bodily changes in very subtle ways. The mind-body knows of events to come in our mental and physical life long before obvious signs are present. The mind-body, the obvious connection between Psyche and Soma know of things about to happen to us, physically or mentally, before we do. In the words of Carl Jung, friend of Freud and founder of analytical psychology, “The more frequently we find the details of events predicted in dreams the more certain becomes the impression of the existence of precognition.”

By The Anarchist Kitten

You live your whole life in confusion and fear,
The need to feel something unbearably near,
Half of you living, Half of you gone,
And inside you know what your doing is wrong.

The thing's that can help, the thing's that may heal,
Are the flame or the blade and the sting of the steel,
The destruction of skin means the death of your soul,
But there's nowhere to run when your living alone.

By Raziel

Tonight I traverse
The back alleys of remembrance;
I know these questioning faces
Recognize this wrinkle of a smile
Bleaching recollections
That I clutch like a hand in the darkness
Voices that seem to hum out of
A cracked record on repeat, fading
And before these distant apartments
Black, their fires Flickering shut on the violet sky
A thousand brilliant drips of light
Roll down the Rainbow Serpent
And slink into the night.

By Alaka Halder