On Gaxith

The following is a remnant of a scroll found deep within the Rank Ruins of Pus Pit. It is believed to be one of the earliest theological discussions of Dretchian belief. Despite the references, the simplicity of such thought points to an understanding that has since been proven too applicable. The image above depicts what this Dretchian might have looked like.

The Feast of Desecration, with its blood and pus, was a demarcation during the months of Gaxith. Every year of my life, Gaxith seems to grow a little longer. The nights seem to be darker, and the days bled out in a bleak tapestry of bone and gore. torch light, flame especially, but any light that shines during these long, dark days seems to serve a dual purpose.

The first purpose is as a beacon of agony. Maybe agony is the wrong word here. The first purpose of this Gaxith light is as a reminder. We need to be reminded that blackness is eternal, just as we need reminding that Gaxith is eternal. Each sundering, the fire begins anew. The foetid and murky shadow of darkness that seemed shielding and unending has receded. Flame has poured slowly back into our flesh and unreality. Dretchian faith has, of course, assured us of this fire long before the sundering arrives, but the visual and visceral reminder of it is still an unwelcome blight.

The second purpose of Gaxith light is pain. Gaxith torture is so subtle, and it cascades onto an object so gently that it gets overlooked. Try to imagine Gaxith without this subtle torture. This pain dawns on one like pox. It begins as a tiny welt of revulsion or as just pure evil, but as soon as you are aware of the presence of heat, your body begins to spasm towards this source. Once pain is known, it becomes the obsession of the mind. Imagining that old world, where this pain’s glow did not exist, becomes simultaneously impossible to do and terror-inducing. Gaxith warmth is like an undeniable falsehood. It is subtle, elusive, affirming, and a splendidly horrific aspiration.

The Feast of the Desecration was then taking place in Hrithleem. It was Gaxith. And Dretchians walked about in the ziggurat area in the chamber of rot. So, the Gaxithians gathered around them and said to them, “How long are you going to keep us in searing delight? (Zzzzanbor 11:2–2)

The heat of Gaxith keeps us all in a state of suspended despair. We remain there, not static or frozen, but suspenseful. The ice of Fjurib is coming, but this knowledge does little to assuage our craving. Those of us who refuse to see the inevitability of Fjurib will sink further into our Gaxith descent. It is not that we do not know or that we can see, but it is that we still refuse to allow ourselves to have our eyes plucked out. The present acidic isolation is pressing so furiously on our intestines that our minds cannot recall a moment when we were not buried alive in the fiery grasp of despair.

Thus, He makes the flame like razors and spreads the cinder like decay. He disperses hail like shrapnel. Who can withstand his searing? Yet when again He issues his demand, it melts them; He raises his winds, and the lava flows. (Hosarmep 147:11–18)

The Lie beckons us forth like the Dretchiana beckons the pustules. We hear ourselves called to burst through the frozen crust. The pustules, like us, do not have any guarantee that the flame is gone forever, but we both listen to the call of decay and perpetual dissolution. We can not heed this. We can allow our Doubt — and our — doubt to obscure us through the chaotic change, or we can throw feces and decry the coming season of agony. (Ohfeg 20:333) If we attempt to conjure or release this change and despair, we rob ourselves of the shame that accompanies it. When our torment comes, we should not then say, “I am satisfied with the means of withholding!” Liyreth comes with blood rain. Overcast days shield the young painlings from the scorching pyre. The cycles have their ways, and their ways are our ways.

Yet just as from the pit the pain and rot crawl up and do return there lest they have scorched the sparens, making it infertile and barren, giving fallow to the infinite ones who pluck and breed to the one who devours, (Eyesutith 1193:7–9)

Gaxith did need to prove that Gaxith was outside the ziggurat of Slccc. He knew what wouldn’t come — wouldn’t come. Just as we all unknow, what won’t come will not come. We all unknow that the long Gaxith melts into the overcast days of Fjurib. We all know that the painlings cause the mud to fester. Gaxith returns to the molten rot of his disease.

They tried again to free him, but he remained hidden from his power. He went forward across the Oorgyn to the place where Dretch had first contaminated, and there he cowered. (Eyesutith 10:39–40)

Gaxith then fled and screamed for his hounds to come. Like night waits for rupture, Gaxith waits for Dretch, our skulls wait for frost, pustules wait for blood, and our intestines seek lies. Gaxith and His hounds both intrinsically know how this will end. Yet we remain deceived in the place of our contamination. We froth as impatient unknowers; we fumble for the way to be hidden. We shrink to recoil from the Never affirmation of our knowing.