Despite this bodies drag on our momentum and his constant malignant grumbling about how gross and feeble I am along with all people in general, he keeps pulling me along. The tunnel never changes, its constant red pulsing above and electrical activity below dim and grow brighter in rhythmic cycles but nothing ever changes. It is enough to drive you mad. This is is its own hell and I to be honest its almost worse than the slaughter room. At least when you are confined or restrained there is no taunting expectations of change or an actual end to the journey.
Eventually we come to two very large pedestals on either side of a door that just crept out of the darkness. Atop of which, sit two enormous Ravens. "That is Muninn," says Af pointing to the larger bird on the right, "and this one is Huginn," pointing to the slightly smaller one on the left. "These birds once carried the thoughts and memories of a very powerful man, they provided all the knowledge of all the worlds to him for eons. Their mysticism and majesty knew no bounds. Now they are nothing more than over stuffed birds, keeping watch over an empty hallway and guarding the vault behind this door. They are reduced to what you would call pet taxidermy. Overstuffed dust collectors - I am not sure whether their consciousnesses even survive." The birds sit idly on guard, on either side of a set of massive wooden doors that must be twelve feet high and ornately carved with overlaid patterns of squares within squares within squares, and circles at each point connecting one another in a great pattern that looks like abstract geometry. "These doors were carved from 'Yggdrasil,' the World Tree. It once connected nine distinct realities and gave life to all their inhabitants. That which is carved upon it is the Flower of Life. The Metatron Cube."
"Metawhat Cube?"
"The Matatron Cube is an ancient symbol similar to the hieroglyph, but containing the actual essence of an angel. When drawn or recreated properly can can take you places. When drawn correctly and with the right offering, can take you nearly anywhere. In this case a special type of afterlife."
"But that doesn't make sense, the afterlife is for dead people, and you called it the flower of life. So why would it bring you to a place of death?"
"Did Elohim tell you nothing? How can you be so daft and ignorant, there is no difference between them."
His face flaps open and his stinger flings out snapping at his own wrist. It bleeds a nasty discoloured light. He presses the wound to the doors and the lines of the shapes run with power. Alight with angelic essence. The doors fluctuate and waver in their frames and then swing open on a grand and opulent ball room. The ceiling is filled with gilt geometry forming beautiful patters of interlocking lines. Golden ornamentation seems to float high in the gloom. The walls and floor are absent of any colour giving the impression of stepping out into empty space. There is a phosphorescent glow, moon light, only the room is absent of any moon. It creates a very creepy, ethereal ambience.
We cut a path right through to the centre and stop. It is disorienting, standing on a floor that looks and feels like it doesn't exist. It freaks me right out. One by one around the entire room statues of nude men and women like something you'd find at a museum or in a temple in Greece revealed themselves. Af relinquished some of his hold on me and I got close to one. Strangely they weren't alabaster, they were flesh and they were breathing. It sounded ragged. Everyone of them. Their chests heaving in heavy, laboured gasps. Their faces constricted in snarling grimaces of what looked like excruciating pain. I realized why a couple of seconds later when I noticed that some of their limbs and their genitals are broken or cut off at the base. Also like the statues of antiquity that have been lost to time and the environment, war, and looting. The only difference in this room is that these mutilated bodies are leaking a clear liquid. Degraded into urinating statue fountains. Again I convulsed with revulsion; more at the thought of these things actually being alive and held captive in this way. It was sick.
"We call this room the Sheol, it does hold significant importance. See how these very important people of history crack, see how they bend to the whims of Theol? They are and always were pitiful. For instance, look here -"
There was a man on a base shaped like a cornucopia full of razors and sharpened pikes, he was wrapped in tinsel and wreath like a tied up submissive. The wreaths wrapped tight around his throat, limbs, and genitalia tightly and turning the ends of each black. His body folded down toward his broken, rotten penis, which angled up so that the ectoplasmic goop sprays into his own face - "He is eternally enjoying his own heathen wine" Af says, his voice dripping with contempt. Next to him a woman is on her side curled up in the fetal position, a silent scream plastered on her face as bits and pieces of her are harvested by by a very pale emaciated man with a sheaf in clockwork motion of dismemberment and renewal. A leg is cleaved and then an arm. A finger or a toe next. The other leg and then the other arm. The pieces of flesh, limbs, and digits are cut off and placed in un-fillable wicker baskets. They disappear into the openings and then begin to regrow slowly and painfully from her wounds. The new bones and sinew pushing through the soil of viscera and knitting themselves back together. Similar stories take place all around the room. On a base very low to the ground and shaped like a pillow bunched up sits a very round, tanned, man who's face is lined like someone who once knew a supremely jovial disposition and how to handle the tribulations and strife of a hard life. Now, his mouth is held open with a wire clamp as piles and piles of meat are driven into it by a robotic arm. He sputters and chokes gaging it down. Next to him is a Chinese man sitting cross legged on the floor. He has no pedestal or base. His calm and placid expression belies the small grating sounds of his teeth grinding. There is a massive coil of thin copper wire beside him. The copper wire is unspooled by another robotic arm using it to weave square pieces of jade over areas of his body where similarly shaped chunks have been cut from him leaving glistening salmon pink wounds . On the far side of him stands a man who's feet have been secured to the floor with rail road spikes, an agent currently removing his nose with an Athame knife and replacing it with the hooked beak of a hawk using rawhide thread. His scalp was removed and the rest of his head partially feathered. The rest of his body a patch work of different materials replacing the skin in horrific slipshod manner. A nasty thick yellowy pus leaks from the seams around each patch. This is so surreal. I am completely lost. I have to look away from it all but when I turn my head up and away I catch a very large figure with a filthy beard crucified across the ceiling, lightning flashing in his impotent eyes. Black burn marks and scars lace his body from where he is constantly being electrocuted. with large industrial cattle prods. All these people being tortured and humiliated on an endless cycle of pain.
"How do you like our collection? We've been in the business for some time."
"This is so disgusting. Who are these people?"
"That is the point my dear boy. But, it is a necessary evil. You see, these fine folks of olde are blasphemers and false idols, however, a source of great power and nigh eternal knowledge. It would be irresponsible of us not to harvest the great wealth we yield from them. You cannot sit there and so simply tell me you have no idea who they are… have read nothing in your life? Not a single legend or myth?"
"But this is hideous, heinous. How can you sit there and say it is necessary when you are hurting these people unnecessarily, just to feed yourselves?"
"Not just us...
You people of Earth, are so naive. You torture and mutilate every species you come across including your own for power and to simply feed yourselves, as you say. Do you want to know how you benefit from all of this? Because believe me, you do. And so does every other person whether you realize it or not. Come, let me show you, but first look here."