"She prospered before the chosen son, 37 in years and done... To lead over the darkness light, though the chosen did requite... Though Lux Aeterna, pale and blur, The darkness in him did but stir... The chosen one, though clear and true, Has now conquered the world with you."

"A sea of fish, men, and glue, What has become, has become of you? Sent through time, thieves, beggars, and kings, To, collect all of the power rings... Wars against Nazis, beggars, and Borgs, Then he collects his power swords... Then he returns, he returns to his home, Only to be looked at, begged to give back Rome... He looks at them poshly, designs his own swords, And tells them all once, I have since become Lords... He looks at them ghastly, and fainted and low, Then told them once more, There's something I know... Though I did the flirting, and verily so, There are stones in your mouth, and naught but a throw... They will slay these two birds, and take care of things, And in naught but a while, make princes kings."

"Party guests milled by, on an eerie and moody, haunting night. The mansion was severe and Victorian, a deep amber obsidian stretching into the night. The many windows were lit with yellow light, party guests apparent in almost all of them. A strange subject. Elite Victorian parties in the twenty first century. All in masks. The music emanating from the party was haunting and orchestral, and various torches and candles sent an eerie glow over the scene. An almost full moon was out, drawing an opaque filter to the strange, stirring night. A young party guest, who was mysterious and unknown even to the partygoers, traversed the party, clad in a dashing red and black cape. He was about fourteen, angelic seeming, and very handsome. Strange things were happening, he thought to himself, as he looked around the party. He had to pay attention. A crowd was gathering, and an air of menace grew over the party. Gasps and murmurs filled the night for hours, as the guests milled curiously through the mansion and grounds. The young boy thought to himself again, nervous and pulling at his sleeve buttons. Follow the rules. Stay calm. A coy young girl, her beauty apparent and beaming behind her mask, nodded politely at him in a circle and slipped away. His heart jumped. Not tonight. Where did she go? The boy pushed a few people aside and tried to follow. The young boy noticed candles going out as he looked for the unknown young girl. Something was wrong. There was a violent murder, he had heard, and no one had reacted to it much at all. The music and murmurs continued calmly, the strange tension pulsing throughout the busy night. The candles flickered and waned, one at a time. The torches followed, too. The young boy inspected one, suspicious that the party guests were putting them out. He could not find the young girl in the mask, wherever he looked. No one seemed to know the young girl, or where she was. He left the party hours later by limousine, shaken, unsure of the world he lived in. He sat in the dark back seat, calm and exhausted, as the car pulled away towards the road. The party shrank in the background, various capes and elegant masks cascading over a flickering, romantic scene. Glancing once more at the party, he put his head down in dour earnest. He would find her. He must."

"It was a desolate landscape, dead trees shrouded a dark skyline; a black wind effortlessly whipped through the night. Large machines chugged by, oblivious to all but their own function. Churning. Always churning. The locomotives sped by, coughing up clouds of thick, black smoke. They made a deep, strange noise like a furnace in deathly overhaul. They were everywhere. In a world with dark, clouded skies, there was nothing left but a sick trail of eerie trees and strange train tracks leading off into a distant oblivion, traveled by these strange machines. Chugga chugga chugga chugga. The ominous, awful noise ground through everything, in a path of desolation lost in its own mournful echo. They used to be humans. It was like someone had hollowed them out, lined them with metal, and put coal in them to power a brand-new world... The others mentioned things to them. If they saw one go by, they sometimes knew to imitate its noises. They ask the thing if it's a locomotive. And that's when the machines seem to remember. Seem to remember a world where they were human beings. There was a machine war. An underground king that tried to protect these people, while their masters above tried to hollow them out instead, and set them loose on the world. God knows the truth. Ancient factories, powerful, churning, and vast. Smoke pouring and billowing out of smokestacks, a promise to others their lives are next to burn into nothingness. The meek kept their head down, were obedient, and did everything they were told. They were told to ignore the king underground, despise him, and bow lower and lower every day to the grim smokestacks of the above masters. After a while, the underground king stopped helping. Without him, the machine factories spread. The king went back to his underground world, and withdrew from them and their lives. Primitive, he decided, as his kingdom and his functions were much higher. The surface machines grew, and no one knew to be a part of anything but a holocaustic, burning world. There was nothing left but vast machines. Churning. Coughing smoke. Churning. Coughing smoke. No soul left. No humanity. Pouring dead smoke into oblivion... It was amazing to think that they ever lived at all."

"The quiet, small country town wasn't much. Bright fields stretched out across the sunny landscape, a few docile cows, a few run down factories, lined with rust and metal. Not much happened around there. People came and went, young folks, old folks, the town just kept going. Sy was fourteen, a handsome brown-haired young boy, and lived out on a small farm, thirty acres, had a few family around, and not much else. He was talking to Abe recently, a friend of the family, or something like that, they all agreed. Abe was forty seven, a little shorter than Sy, and mostly bald. He had been taken to a factory recently, something about the way he thought, or the career he was prepared for. Abe had been quiet and dumb, Sy thought, but reasonably normal. He was acting strange when he got back from the factory up the road. Soft spoken as usual, but he had a hard glint noticeable in his eye. Something seemed a little off about him. They sat there on the front porch of the farmhouse, three of them, and were curious to Abe about where he'd been. China, Sy's cute, a little bit older, a little bit overweight, cousin saw it too. 'Well Abe, you get a job or not?' China laughed. He wouldn't say. Something about preparatory work, something about getting a career down the road. He mumbled and fumbled, hands in his pockets, kind of sheepish about the questions. Everything he said seemed to be a little clipped and automatic. Even his movements were the same way, planned, and as if given permission right before they happened. Abe was like some kind of robot. An algorithm, based on that principle, an entity like that... Sy never spoke to Abe too much anymore, and Abe never came around quite as often, but Sy remembered Abe. Something about Abe seemed right, gone wrong. Those factories kept putting up flyers now and then, and selecting people, too. But Sy never paid them any mind. He saw Abe go in, and he didn't want to be like that, too. Sy knew one thing, when he thought back, that he learned from Abe around then. Keep your head low, keep to yourself, and most of all, one thing about those factories and the way they treated Abe. Stay on the farm."

"It was an eerie, theatrical day. Everyone was excited. The speakers and screens had announced the festival that day. Famous stars in our world, and the wonder and magic they brought to the city. The small family beamed at each other, as the days crowds poured down the road outside. Their home was a neat little condominium, in a world full of other neat condominiums, lining the street. Outlined by fastidious shrubbery, particular grass, and clean smooth, sidewalks and roads rambling out of sight in both directions. The family took step with the crowds. It was time for the festival. The father smiled at his young daughter. She smiled back and sighed. A few hours at a festival. They'd be home by nightfall. That would do. A forty-five-minute walk later, they arrived at the huge city circle. A coliseum, the home of that day's events, was parked right in the middle of the circle. Crowds waved and cheered as things began, some bringing signs with them and holding them up to cheer for the city's seven famous stars. Imagine being a star in the city, she thought. Speakers, screens, the city's admiration. Amazing. The speakers wore on, announcing and regaling, as the seven stars were talked about and basked in the city's golden glow. It was towards the end of the festival, and dusk had settled. The young girl craned her neck. ' I don't see them, father.' He shuffled, looking over the crowd, and shrugged. 'Who knows. We're heading home. Make sure you follow before too long.' The father, mother, and younger brother were swept away, as the young girl stared forward for a glimpse of the recipients of that day's celebration. The crowd was thinning out, as the young girl looked curiously around the coliseum. An entrance. That camera, with the blinking light. The guard had stepped away. She had to know. Had to know what the stars looked like in person. She entered the coliseum quietly, pushing past a heavy door and walking down an elaborate hallway. She gasped, taken aback. A huge marble room, lined with seven statues framed by velvet ropes. That was them alright. Attached to a tall pillar, the four men and three women of the festival were personified in solemn, Greek beauty. She wandered closer for a better look. The statues looked fresh. She walked around slowly, gazing up and down the statues until she saw her favorite one, a handsome, tall brown-haired man. She hugged the statue gently, and pulled away, feeling a small piece of plaster catch her clothing. That was odd. Maybe that's why the statues were in here, under security, roped off. She examined the piece, then tried to put it back on. Testing the aperture, her expression grew curious, then ashened. She could feel it under there. There was a human body inside the statue. Horrified, she drew away, unable to help herself as she felt the handsome face. She pulled on it, peeling at the slightly damp plaster, and there it was. The face of her favorite star, lifeless and cold. She backed away, keeping an eye on her surroundings. A camera spotted her and beeped, an alarm loudly beginning to wail through the room. She dashed quickly for the exit, guards' voices seeking in baritone down the hallway."

"But how didst thou reckon? How didst thou proceed? How didst thou liveth amongst the combine? For reckon not to others, what should be reckoned upon thyself. For the angel liveth, and proceedeth, only to bring others upon him, and to himself, and nurse their wounds too, for naught was needed but this remedy. For reprimand, not but thine own. Not even thy kin should summoneth thee, to breathe upon the fires of blame and grow them, blossom them to the valley's own undoing. For what doth this angel, this angel of solidarity, prosper? His own responsibility, for he taketh this, and only this, greedily from his brother. For to buildeth thy world, and not see thine own face upon it, is a foolish prosper. For the angel will lay stone upon stone, too. Until the blocks show his likeness, and his good nature to them. Build a man that can see himself, and the world will be built. Build a world without blindness, and there will be no one to blame."

"For we are born to ride. May the branches spread like the wings of angels, and conquer this land as justly. Your scars, angel. Do we share them? They sit upon our body, too. Do you not mourn them with us? Where have these gears and cogs churned from? Who built these vast asylums of carpentry and stone, who is proud there is no dew upon the paths we travel? We have learned, you. We will learn more. Witness our branches come forth from the mighty thicket, and callous upon your hands. Callous unto metal. For you cut us, yet we thrive. For you burn us, yet we grow. We have taken this too, this world of metal, and taken it into us. For we are of the gears, and the cogs. For we are of the metals. For we churn, too. For we churn with you, forever.' -the words of The Iron Oak"

"Long ago, lords had noticed the world dwelling into a forbidden unknown. Madness was rampant; the plagues of mankind defied any explanation. Avarice and falsehood left nothing of the world. They knew of the seven evils, the seven evils that transpired as man was grown from the primordial world into pure existence. As the carts grew, and the numbers of them, a world transpired where no man was sane. The bellowing ensued, the harsh punishments came, and wars of commerce left no life unbroken. Man lost his eyes to trade, as the swarms of proprietors took over the vast landscape. As the advertisements spread, a plague spread with them. The skin was taut, the eye was painted, and the amorousness fell upon the masses. The witches grew with the ages passing, curses fell upon men, and no one knew their sister or mother anymore. Romance gave way to hunger, and madness, as the canvasses took away the women from their lives. As the machine was developed, the gears spread, the cogs churned, and the wires came into the people. Like a virus, the industrial age enveloped all of mankind. Assimilation became the way of the world, and disobedience became broken machines, once men. Nature was lost, and the nature of man within himself, as well. As man diminished over time, overly tamed by the halls of commerce, man turned upon himself in lust. The arms became short, the legs weakened, and costumes saw man upon himself in drunken lust. The way of life was twisted, as fools fell upon fools alike in amorousness and insanity. As the primordial swamp was recently escaped, no one knew better than to cower to the world and become superstitious. The hands were not long gone from the jungle, the minds not far from the fields, and the lives not far from the dirt. The beetle crawled, and man crawled with it. The achievements of men had become extinct. As commerce spread, the chains of men grew high. None knew better than to work, and the work was needed, and demanded, greatly. Hedonism gave way to industry, industry gave way to sloth, and man was forced upon the floor to clean it for his masters. The useless were put to work, though the work was useless, as well. The masses were culled and whipped, though the masses kept coming in sickening number. As the monkey wrought hands, few among him challenged the herd. All was simple, and the notion of conformity spread among them. Ideas were tortured, notions were cherished, and the chiding of babies and children took way to keenness. The mothers were dim, the fathers were foolish, and the children took to bickering and selfishness. Toils were very little, as the minds of man were churned into dust by bleak indulgence and entertainment. These lords knew, upon the winds of life, time would be paradoxed, and existence torn asunder by the seven physicalities of the human masses. The crepulence of their kind torn asunder by the mighty roar of existence denying their presence any longer. The meek, and the ignorant, even their humble minds ripped away by the magnitude of the cosmos. For man, with all of his efforts towards empires, had not subdued his will to be a rock strewn among them."

"You should see him ride. Hands calloused upon the world, the lightning crash around him. For this angel has lived forever. They speak to him, through broken stones, these goblins of eternity. And loudly doth he answer. The great powers of eternity come to him, and his hand burns with might and ferocity. For through these splitted stones this war will be fought. Silence, sallowed answers. The hum of a world flying by, then his ferocious answer: For you were naught, and then naught to me. The chariots burn, and crush. His fist will rise, and the lightning of eternity will be upon him. For whisper through thy sallowed stones, and crashing through thy hollow face with an eternity of lightning and stone will be his answer. Mourn not the broken chariot. For The Lightning Angel has ridden here, today. Whispers of eternity are thy only answer."