THE GLASS CYLINDER closed around me as I awaited what I could only assume was certain death. I would step into the unknown. Perhaps there was a song or a poem that could adequately define the situation, but personally, I found more comfort in the Word. I thought of Ecclesiastes, where Solomon said that both the foolish and the wise would fall into darkness; we all face the same fate. An energy flowed around me, and I began to lose myself. I looked at my hands and saw a transparent image of myself appear. My body grew numb, and I felt as though I was slipping into a dream—one from which I would never awaken. That was me: wise enough to grasp the sacrifice required, yet foolish enough to step forward.
Reality faded before me, and I slipped into a void. A pulsing stream of light stretched through the center of the void, like a tunnel of light, piercing the fabric of space and time. It all seemed so fluid…light piercing dark, me flowing in a stream of light. All tactile feeling left me; I was now separate from the physical reality I had known. Echoes circulated the void, growing ever near. A cry rang out—the cry of battle? Was I already hearing the sound of someone facing down a tide of hatred, a battle I would soon enter?
The scene drew near. I could feel it now. The Scribe had no fear of the fog that pursued him. He found sanctuary in knowing the Lord. He was a man consumed by the cold unseen, yet fulfilled by warmth. There were forces at work other than evil.
I come in his name.
The Scribe had taken his own life, limiting the entity’s power. Still it took his body; still it struck down his protectors. With no strength remaining, the knights leaned upon their swords and staffs, shoved into the ground, to await death with honor. The new entity opened its hidden mouth, and a wave of its cold fog roared toward the knights, enveloping them. It entered their bodies, freezing them from the inside. They shook, and they trembled, but they made no sound. Their very life essences were being frozen, yet they refused to cry out. Nor did they curse the Lord they had served so valiantly. Amazing…
The last knight crumpled to the ground, his skin gray and cold. The sages stood over the fallen knights. The entity inside the Scribe’s body paused, as if sensing my approaching presence. The sages reacted similarly as I entered the Scribe’s possessed corpse.
At first it felt as if I had awakened from a long slumber. Then the cold set in. The entity did not react suddenly but slowly, seemingly not viewing me as a threat.
“What’s this? Another soul for me to devour?” it said in a distant echo.
“No,” I said. It felt so strange to share a single body, yet to possess two different voices and thought patterns. “I have come to fight you.”
The entity laughed. “You? You are no match for my power,” the entity said mockingly. “Wait…have you been sent here from another time? Ah, the future, yes. So you have seen what I am capable of, yet you are not afraid? You are either very vain or very foolish.”
“I am neither. I am faithful and loyal, and that gives me courage. To fear something is to grant it power. You have no power over me,” I said.
The entity scoffed. “Enough!” it shouted. “I will send you back into the void for all
eternity!” With that, the entity drew in the energy of all its slain minions. As its power grew, I began to drift, my anchor loosed by its surge of hatred and sorrow, a force beyond any one man. The sages focused the last of their energy, drawing what they could from their fallen knights, and their staffs released a bright light into the waves of darkness. Their energy flowed into the Scribe’s corpse and was channeled into me.
No, one man could not resist the entity. And if one be overcome, the two shall stand against him, and a threefold cord shall not be quickly broken. Ecclesiastes. We were united threefold—the knights, the sages, and the scribes—against this entity. The entity’s hold on the body was slipping, and its rage grew.
The knights were still there. I could feel them—their spirits, their strength. The entity’s rage burned as its power diminished, like fire without oxygen. What would happen to me? The fog surrounding the body began to fade, and my skin—my skin now—returned to normal. The last remnants of the entity’s cold soul faded from me and formed into a whirlwind, spiraling into the sky. The dark shadows that it controlled joined with it, the mass swirling faster and faster, tightening in on itself until…nothing.
The fog and shadow vanished into the night, leaving behind only the full moon. The stars…so numerous! So glorious! The sages looked at me in wonder and then turned their gaze toward the light that surrounded the fallen knights. The knights’ skin regained color, and their chests rose and fell with life. They stood, swords and shields ready, but the enemy was nowhere to be seen.
I looked down at the white toga that clothed my body. The chest of the toga was red, drenched in blood. The knife fell free, and the puncture sealed itself. I was alive, yet so far from the life I had known. I began to sing a song that I had not known before. Had the Scribe written it?
Unravel the mystery of me, The key embedded in me. What is it to be?
This call I answer,
This path I venture, What is it that I see? Who is it that I hear?
In this nightmare I have known In the past I run from
Unravel the mystery of me, The key embedded in me. What is to come?
The past I explore,
How do I move forward? Is it I that holds me back? Who do I wait for?
The Savior I look to In the battle I run to
Unravel the mystery of me, The key embedded in me.
Who am I to question the struggles I have known? Am I to understand this plan you have woven?
The will that I follow by your unseen hand
Unravel the mystery of me, The key embedded in me. In the final victory,
Will you be waiting for me? This Savior
I accept the Lord that I kneel to. Unravel the mystery of my salvation, Your Word embedded in me.
There was a mystery about all that had happened, and it stretched well beyond my understanding.
One of the sages spoke. “You are the one we have waited for.” He made a motion to the sky with his staff. “One of wisdom and faith who would come, sent by God from another age, to take this body.”
“How did you know?” I asked. I followed his motion with my gaze.
“Gabriel empowered us with a message. The Holy Spirit empowered us for battle,” the other sage replied.
“Was it a dream? The message, I mean?” I asked. I studied my new body. The sages nodded.
“I, too, was a part of a team assembled by a singular dream…in another time, another place. The rest is up to them now.” It all seemed to be leading to something. But what?
David’s Sacrifice