Heartland-The Second Book of the Codex of Souls by Mark Teppo Read Free Book Online

translation of my name. Like a slug pulling in on itself, I try to hide inside my soft shell, but he chases me, his claw digging into my flesh. Those people in Portland died in an attempt to bring us knowledge of the Infinite, of the Creative Spirit that made everything. Those people didn't die in vain. They died for a cause. They died so that we could understand why we live, Michael. They died for knowledge.
    In ten years, there will be another million souls born on this planet. In ten years, Portland will be rebuilt and this will all be forgotten. We'll still be destroying the world as we refashion it with our limited bovine imaginations. Time slays us all, Michael, and the vast majority of people that it takes will never make any sort of positive impact on this planet. Why shouldn't they make an actual contribution in the search for knowledge? Why shouldn't they be allowed the opportunity to participate in a transmission to the other side? Bernard sought an audience with the Primal Agent of Reality. Those who sponsored him sought to Know the Divine. Can you damn them for the effort they made?
    Yes, I shout at him. Over and over. Yes, I can. Yes, I did.
    His claw stops digging. Milky tears drip from his good eye. Yes, he says, an echo taken up by the Chorus, who swoop around us in a rushing swirl of blank faces and hollow mouths. Yes, you did.
    I weep in the dream, and maybe my body weeps outside the dream as well. I feel like I am starting to float. The library becomes transparent, and soon all that is left is the chair in which the Old Man has collapsed. He is getting smaller. My body is a disease, he whispers, it can no longer support life. It must be slain.
    He is the organization, and the organization is the man. What I see, he says, is the end. The end of this age, of this body. It is time for us all to be set free.
    Free. From ourselves. From our histories.
    My legacy . He beckons to me with his claw hand, summoning me out of my soft shell. You are my ultimate resolution. My panacea for this decay. You are the hand that will break this corpus mundi. He bows his head, showing me the naked crown of his skull. All the black wounds on his skull stare at me.
    In the dream, his request is not a request, but a command. And I balk, as I did in the flesh yesterday. I do not want to do this; I do not want to become what I was before—a devourer of souls, a breaker of the light.
    I am dying anyway , a voice tells me, you're doing me a favor .
    It is the voice of my shadow, the voice I thought I had destroyed. But, like Samael said, the shadow is never gone. Never completely forgotten. The stain will always remain.
    For the last ten years, I'd been taking the souls of tainted men. To my own guilt, I had added the poison of psychopaths and deviants. At the unconscious bequest of the black seed I let root in my heart, I fed it all the rage and anger and bile the world could offer. That seed, that Qliphotic influence, had tried to make me over in its image.
    In the end, I threw off that yoke, and found a path of forgiveness. Did it absolve my deeds? No. But it showed me the way out of the dark wood I had lost myself in. I saw the light, and earned . . . no, I have not earned this. I have not earned anything. I have only learned.
    The stain cannot be removed. It is the shadow that defines us, because without it, we do not know who we are.
    The Hierarch asks me to kill him. He asks me to stain the Chorus with the Willful Act of devouring a soul. Into the holy and cleansed core of my refreshed spirit, he asks me to bring a little darkness. Just a little bit.
    Nunc. This is how it begins.
    And I did it. In my dream, I watch Portland burn again, and I watch Philippe smile as I spike his soul. Light pours out of him: first from his eyes, then from his mouth and nose, and finally all the black sores on his skull open up and release his light. His spirit erupts in a brilliant geyser, and with the net of my Chorus extended, I catch it. A