The Philosophy Leg
A Treatise on the Destruction of the Hell Mouth and the Mechanics of Soul Manipulation
It has been claimed that the Hell Mouth, the great Deathgate, has not always been open. Once, when legends tell us that the world was green and blue, and water flowed aboveground, and humans did not live in fear and subservience to Hell, it was shut.
I posit that what was opened once can be closed once more. To achieve this will require a sacrifice of monumental proportions, however. The gate is made of oirchalcum and black diamond, a unique combination that is resistant to all mortal means of manipulation or destruction. How then can the Deathgate be shut?
The answer comes to us from an ancient tome from long before Hell’s ascension. It speaks of a time hundreds of thousands of years before when the Hell Mouth gaped open. Humanity almost ceased to exist, but for the ultimate gift of three individuals.
We speak now not of things judged with weights or measures, but of the invisible and unquantifiable, less the realm of science and more of metaphysics and philosophy. The tome claims that the only way to close the Deathgate again is for three people to sacrifice themselves upon its demonic frame. The three who sacrifice themselves do more than give up their blood or even their lives. It requires their very souls.
The tome speaks of three seals or locks that can only be closed through a process called “soul manipulation”. It seems that the souls sacrificed take up residence within the gate itself, somehow becoming part of the seals themselves. There is no release for those souls, no eternal heaven or next round on the wheel of life, or so the records hint. Once locked, the only way to reopen the Hell Mouth is to destroy the seals and the souls of the sacrificed along with them.
This begs many questions. Assuming that we can believe that humans have eternal souls in the first place — something attested to by both angelic and demonic forces in the present day, the remaining are:
What mutilation and manipulation must take place to transform an eternal soul into a seal capable of being destroyed? How much does the soul weigh, and what tactility allows it to manipulate physical matter? Or, perhaps the Deathgate occupies some strange half-space, part physical and part spiritual. What happens to the souls when the seals are formed? For the immortal to transform into something that can be destroyed speaks of a deep transference, a sort of transubstantiation, as it were, of a kind we are unfamiliar with. Perhaps the ancients knew more.
Instructions
Leg 26 – The Philosophy Leg: Write a philosophical piece. It can be a made-up ontology, metaphysics, or aphorism. A fragment of a larger declaration, or self-contained statement. It can also be a message or a letter to someone, a philosophical exchange, that works too (including historical figures).
It really can be anything or any topic, practical philosophy like Epictetus, a crazy-man ramble like Nietzsche, or something very, very convoluted, like Hegel.
It’s up to you what you want it to be, but have fun.
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