Prologue

Prologue to The Eidolon by K. Wolf

“By a route obscure and lonely,

Haunted by ill angels only,

Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,

On a black throne reigns upright,

I have reached these lands but newly

From an ultimate dim Thule"

From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime,

Out of SPACE"Out of TIME.”

" Edgar Allen Poe

 

 

 

 

 

 

eidolon

/ʌɪˈdəʊl'n/

1. an idealized person or thing.

2. a spectre or phantom.

 

The Eidolon. That’s what the used to call me: A phantom drawing the planetary curtains of nightfall - only not as poetic or beautiful. Or an amalgamation of a chimera manufactured from lonely constellations seeking inner spirit and the narcissist’s fabricated prayers amidst falsified complacency.

Simply, a mere illusion of one’s imagination - this one is always the one that gets me. How foolish. Haven’t you learnt anything, my dear mortals? Such a phantom cannot possibly co-exist in a dimension ordained by abhorrent deities because reality decrees anything unexplainable, as mythology. Stories conducted from fear, poetry deduced from insanity.

 

An unorthodox paradox, considering your God is all but tangible.

 

Does that make him any less real to you?

 

Why has your Bible not been labelled with such mythology?

 

Is it because such fables and fabrications endear hope?

 

Hope, a far more alluring notion than fear - and it rules every element of your world. When you pray upon a fallacious deity, you are preying on hope. And your precious hope is far more fatal than any legend or folk-tale, for hope has killed far more than any other sentiment.

 

So, when you void an orthodox paradox on grounds of a diverged theory, you are the snake injecting our heritage with venom until ink cascades from the parchment, until the words meet the oceans. Tides washing idioms free from sin.

 

I am The Eidolon.

 

Can you hear me?

 

I'm only as real as your mind allows. A phantom of your memoirs, guarding the lonely roads of your neurotic dreams. One of your senses can perceive me, a cognitive dissonance - transmitting erratic neurons to broken synapses, no worse than your God.

Author's Note

This is not meant to be anti-religious.

Reviews

[Davidgeo]

You smell very familiar. In a not so bad way.

I know you.

[Eisho Shu]

I don't see the point of this being considered as anti-religious. I really like how this prologue opening up the potential of the book. Don't worry about religion. Just write as you like, there is no need to worry about it.

[busterlee]

What is it then? It struck a chord with me and I am definitely anti-religious.