Sagittarius

July 30
Under the Sign of The Spear
Age of Apotheosis

I tap the path with the blunt end of my walking stick to check the ground. Sometimes my mind’s eye opens and I wonder while wandering. It helps to have a leg (or a stick) in the waking world to reassure myself that the road still winds before me. I was in such a state – half a mind turned back to appointments and rituals at the imperial core – when strange sensation affected my guiding rod. The blunt end froze itself in place on the ground but from the head, where I had earlier fixed an ancient spearhead, came a fierce shaking that took both hands to steady. I attempted to force it back under my command but it met will with resistance. I had to learn to let go.

Standing still and straight, the walking stick assumed the aspect of a totem. Sunlight washed over the dirt-stained spearhead and cured with sparkling glory the taint of ages until a blade two feet long, golden-bronze, shone atop my instrument. The wood worked out the warped curves of its form until it was straight as sunrays and a black ball – cold to the touch – grew into existence at its base. The runes along the shaft spell out a name, though only I appear able to read it. It calls itself “Star Piercer.”

Rather than divine gift, I believe this was happy accident. In my absent-minded state I had tapped my guiding rod into a kind of keyhole. I do not remember what the landscape of Sagittarius looked like before I activated the mechanism in the rocks. As soon as Star Piercer had finished its transformation, a matrix half-hidden in soil came alive. From the impossible density of deep earth rose wide bastions, citadel towers, circled keeps. Forests fell to form firebreaks. A river rushed into a labyrinth-like moat. I shuddered in fetal form while a great pillar carried me upward until I could see across the entire form of the fort.

And atop the scarred soil of Sagittarius was a mammoth structure, part defensive framework, part organizing principle. And it took on the form of a Pentagram.

A Fragment of Happy People Land: A bridge? No. He was the younger brother. Two houses were held by one household.

A small blade hidden inside speech: (n), A barb. A sharp mind would do well to keep a store of sarcasms. Even thick hides have weak points.

A distant trumpet, sounding reveille, trembles with a message from the Monolith, “ Which question has only echoes?” Is it rhetorical, or is it a question begging for an answer?

The Caravan Continues, to Capricorn!