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It was atop the highest peak among the mountains surrounding the sacred valley of the three shrines that Elexial found her. His mistress, knelt in meditative death-posture, her eyes staring unblinking upon the surface of the land before her, had been waiting for him in this special place. Here the air was thin, but Elexial no longer breathed as normal men did. Magic was a part of him, as it had been before his transcendence. Now it was all of him. His shackled eyes saw the ephermal identity of everything around him, as they had in the room during his moment of black enlightenment.

He looked now upon the young woman no more than ten years his age and saw within. This was not a creature of the August Star. Here sat a beautiful woman who could not be described in terms of right and wrong, heaven and hell, chaos and order. She, as he had become, was above such mortal concepts. Indeed, she was above such immortal concepts. Elexial could only halt in a moment of perfect reflection upon the depth of this truth.

"That which you perceive is never real. Being preceeds experience."

The words rang clearly in his mind. Yet he knew that it was impossible to fathom them conceptually. Nor was it possible to comprehend them by directly experiencing the truth they conveyed. Elexial was the truth. Elexial was the only truth.

Tense, yet smooth and inflective with every step, Elexial approached his priestess from behind. His footfalls crunched loudly on the fallen leaves beneath his feet. The wind whipped his kendo robe, white hair, and black headband to his left fiercely. The golden kanji of "universe" embroidered on the ends of his headband reflected the bright light of the sun at its zenith. The sound of the cloth rippling in the wind mixed with his steps and with the smell of the thin, fresh air. The sting of the cold altittude flushed his skin in places and left it white or lightened in others. All of these experiences he drank like water; he felt the touch of existence to the essence of his identity, and the sensation of very peacefully swallowing the moment and understanding it with zen awareness.

Then he was no longer facing her. The sun was low in the sky, just about to pass below the distant horizon. Behind him, his mistress burned amidst the flames of a funeral pyre he had constructed for her. He reflected upon the memory of the duel that had taken place.

Eternity. Traveling without moving. Infinity. Moving without traveling. A sword exists. The sword is the alpha. The sword is the omega. Beginning without end. End without beginning. The sword is the cycle of cycles. Every life it takes is a life given. It destroys by creating, and creates by destroying.

The swordmaster. The spirit of time. The spirit of space. The waters. The poetry. The swordmaster defines the cycle of cycles. He wields the sword. He is outside the cycle, and he is part of the cycle. The sword is his mirror, cycle of cycles. He is the meaning of the cycle. He is the purpose of the mirror. His poetry is the essence of the universe.

The enemy. There is no enemy. There is no companion. There is no body. There is no mind, and there is no soul. There is nothing. There is only here. Here is infinity. Here is eternity. Here is the enemy. Here is the companion. Here is the body. Here is the mind, and here is the soul. Here is everything. Within this place is found everything. All things are one thing, in one place and in one moment. Forever has already happened. Every location has been visited. Every event has occured.

Memory. Memory is eternal. Memory is infinite. Memory hath forged the sword. Memory hath made the swordmaster. Memory giveth them both purpose and hath forged the enemy. Memory moves the cycle of cycles. Memory moves time, and memory moves space. Memory moves the body, and moves the mind. Memory is the spirit. The spirit is rememberance.

He that reads is the one who writes.


Slowly, Elexial reached up to take the knot of his headband in his fingertips. Gently unweaving the knot, he removed the black strip from his eyes. His eyes still closed, he lifted the band to his forehead and fastened it behind. He lowered his hands. His eyes still closed, he knelt to his knees and rested on his heels. Placing his hands firmly on his thighs, he took a deep breath. A thousand sensations assailed his perceptions. A thousand smells, a thousand tactile impressions, a thousand sounds, and a thousand flavors of life all wove themselves into one seed of existence that needed only one thing to be given life and born.

The sun touched the peaks of heaven and hell, earth and sky united, and Elexial opened his eyes ever-so-slowly.

Pure unfiltered consciousness streamed into his mind. Pure concentrated energy cascaded through him like four elements rushing in to fill the fifth element of his experiential void.

First wind. Like air, sight was sucked inside his consciousness. Like a starving breath. Like the first breath of life. Elexial cried, as an infant cries at birth.

Then water. With all the rushing, terrifying, drowning power of a tsunami, Elexial was overwhelmed and washed away in oceanic bliss. The waves of absolute experience surged into his awareness and formed whirlpools of essence swirling around the irises of his eyes, drawn inward by the spiritual magic of the moment. He shed tears of blood.

Then earth. Petrifying comprehension solidified and made crystalline the surreal atmosphere of his rebirth. Vertigo was replaced with a singularity of perception that described and defined everything in transcendent enlightenment. The whirlpools of energy being absorbed into his eyes folded inward upon themselves as steel is feld to temper a blade.

Then came fire. The whirlpools of essence had were replaced with piercing clarity within the boundries of his widely-opened eyes and burned with white flame and light. His eyes became pure white fire, utterly consumed by the spiritual energy that literally bled from the corners of his eye-lids and wafted away in the twilight breeze like silvery whisps of smoke. Transcendent sight seared itself into his eyes and left him without physical eyes.

The four elements mixed with the fifth element of void that had been awakened in his moment of prescience earlier at the shrine. And the void cut two thin slices into the white fire and whisps of smoke outlining his now widely opened eyes. Like cracks in oblivion itself, two vertical slits of absolute nothingness opened and became his pupils. But distortedly large as his eyes had become and vaguely defined the way a flame and thin curling smoke is vague and ephermal, these slits of utter blackness were so sharp as to instill fear just by seeing them by the way they so piercingly contrasted with the pure white energy surrounding them.

These were the eyes given to a newly awakened and transcendent swordmaster reborn as a spirit of the August Star.


It was time.


Elexial reached the bottom of the mountain by the time the sun had set and returned to the shrine. As he approached, it was not his eyes that startled the guards - it was his aura. Visible now, Elexial emitted whisps of white smoke that floated off the contours of his body as if they were not influenced by wind or tempurature. Elexial literally bled spirit energy. The appearance was vulgar enough that it was physically visible even to normal mortals.

His eyes cast not bright beams - but black shadows. Though they burned with energy that illuminated them the same way his aura illuminated him, those black slits of oblivion created darkness wherever he looked, not light. It were as if they absorbed light and energy and then bled it as glowing smoke from the edges of his eye-lids and the outline of his body.

Creatures that might've before attacked were instead cowed and scurried to leave his path. No-one could not sense it. No-one was incapable of recognizing his presence when his eyes set upon them.

The spirits guarding the shrine of Heaven watched in awe as he passed before the gates, his footsteps like that of a ghost of Yomi, with the Enlightenment of a spirit of Takagamahara, the aura of a transcendent spirit, and the eyes of the August Star. A small vial of blood dangled from his sash.

It was the portal to the blessed-realm he sought. And knowing exactly where to find it, as he extended his transcendent senses outward like thin spidery fingers to feel for its aura, he recognized it instantly - along with everyone else whose aura he encountered as his mind searched. Those whose auras the silent spidery lotus petals of his mind touched upon felt the chill of his inhuman presence, and those auras were many. No doubt the most of the shrine was aware that an enlightened creature of chaotic order, madness, and oblivion had arrived at its doorstep.