Chapter 85

For the first time, there is rain.

It pounds on the stone walls, swirling around the spires and turrets. It caresses the clear windows, dripping off each stone like blood. It must be God's wrath, come to us in the form of liquid terror... a symbol of worse things to come. 

He turns away, distraught from the never-ending sight of rivers pouring from above, washing the land with change. Never before has he experienced such fear, shaking through his soul with an overwhelming intensity.

The old is being toppled, the regime coming to an end. But it is difficult for him to grasp the "end".

End only exists in the relation to the beginning, omega to the alpha, and there is no beginning here. There is only the "is", the simple state of being that stretches farther than the eye can see. No one knows when it started; it just was, and is, and always will be.