by Jay Weidner

The window on the Great Ship revealed the planet in all of its beauty. It was still very far away but its blue white luminescence shone brightly despite the great distance. In just a few short weeks their journey through the deep abyss of outer space would soon come to an end. The three hundred and fifty years of their confinement inside the Great Ship would be over and they would finally have a new planet to live upon.

Seth stared out the grand window of the observatory, his mind focused upon the powerful configuration of stars and planets that lay behind him. He was a forceful man of great height and bulk, a man who knew he had to move quickly to accomplish his goal. Reading the message of the stars as a sign of his coming triumph, he thought about the dark actions that he must take in order to survive. For once he and the others arrived on the New World it would be too late. He had to move now. If this world was to be his then he would have to act with great speed and determination. For him, it had come down to only two choices: to kill or to surrender.

His hand grasped tightly around the hilt of his sword, he strode down the long metal hallway towards Osir's chamber. The others would be preparing to park the huge ship in an orbit around the New Earth. He knew that, as navigator of the ship, he should be assisting them, but instead, he had something very different on his mind.

Seth was out of favor with Osir, the great ruler of his people. In a dark moment of confusion and indecision Seth's actions had cost the lives of the hundreds of thousands of people aboard their Great Ship. As the chief navigator of the Great Ship, it was his job to calculate their path through the vast reaches of space that separated their home planet, near the God Star, from the New World that waited just ahead. And he had calculated wrong, very wrong. About one billion miles out from the central star of this solar system the ship had hit the meteor shower. Literally thousands of meteors, rocks and other debris hit the ship. For three and a half long hours the ship was battered, slammed and broken by the stream of rocks. Because of this horrific storm the ship had been almost completely destroyed and virtually everyone on board had died. And even though the leader Osir and the others had forgiven him, he could not free himself from the power of the dark thoughts that seemed to constantly possess him since it happened. It was as though, as they approached this dark storm, a terrible sickness had entered and taken hold of his mind. Unable to trust himself, Seth could no longer trust the others. So, forsaking all of his prior training and initiations, he closed his heart to them and began to think only of himself, of his name and his reputation. He realized that he would go down in history as the one who had made the greatest mistake ever, costing the lives of many people. He had seen how the survivors looked at him with pity in their eyes. Already they were compiling the history of the voyage. Already his name would live in infamy. And his name and reputation were everything to him.

With these dark thoughts preying upon his mind, Seth opened the door to Osir's chamber and entered. Osir was his mentor in the Fellowship of the Way. He was a gentle man, a kind and wise leader who treated his people with immense sensitivity and respect. This would be the hardest thing that Seth would ever do, but it was essential to his own survival. . "Why do you enter my chamber without permission Seth?" Osir's resonant voice was deep and soothing. Noticing the wild look in the eyes of his long time companion, he could see that Seth's mind was in a deep state of inner turmoil. Since the tragedy, he had seen the inner conflicts swell and grow to a virtual boiling point. He, and the few remaining survivors had tried their best to bring him back to the peaceful and serene ways of their people but to no avail. In recent days, as if haunted by fleeting shadows from which there was no escape, Seth had even taken to hiding in the ruins among the seared bodies of the dead.

Gifted with the power of insight into the nature of time and events, Osir had foreseen the possibility of this moment. He knew the choice that now lay before them both.

"It is you I seek my friend."

"Why is it when you say the word 'friend' you do it with the intention to hurt me?"

"I have no such intention Osir. I came here to discuss our future in the New World. "

"You did nothing of the kind. Ever since the tragedy I have watched you pulling away from us. Yes, it was a horrible mistake that you committed but one that any of us could have made it also. You need to forgive yourself. I know it preys upon your mind, driving you towards madness. I beg you, please reconsider what you have come here to do, for the consequences of these actions will haunt you throughout eternity." His voice became even more tranquil and hypnotic as he continued to try and turn Seth's mind away from the invading darkness. "Remember all the years of our training in the Great Order, the joy, the love, the camaraderie. Back away from this negativity and focus your mind once again upon the pure light of spirit that resides inside of you. Let your heart open once more so that we can work together to heal you of this great madness."

Using all of his inner strength to resist the warm, persuasive power of Osir's voice, Seth wrapped his thoughts tightly around his sinister goal. With a fierce look of determination in his eyes, he grasped the handle of his great sword and drew it out of its sheath.

"Is this how you plan to kill me? Are you going to use the very sword that I gave you at your initiation into the Brotherhood of the Light so many years ago? Will you use the sword which symbolically represents the wisdom of the Immortals?"

Osir's persuasive words began to have an effect on Seth's hardened heart. He knew that if he kept listening to the mesmerizing voice of Osir he would not be able to perform the act that he had come to do, and that all would be lost. "Have I not always treated you with respect and kindness Seth? Don't you see that even if you destroy the memory of my life and the events of this voyage there will be a residue of this deed always remaining in the collective unconscious of our race?.

Seth quickly raised the sword over his head.

"You know as well as I that my son Ra will avenge this act Seth."

Had he not mentioned the name of Ra perhaps Seth would have spared him. But ever since the tragedy, he believed that Ra, the son of Osir and Ast, was his nemesis. Ra was the person he would most like to forget. For it was with Ra, the apprentice navigator that he had discussed his chosen course for the ship, and it was Ra who, based upon his own calculations had foreseen the possibility of the meteor shower and had begged him to alter his course. Fueled by the humiliation of this memory, Seth resolved to bring this encounter with Osir to its dark conclusion. Angry and raging, blinded by his own delusion, in a fit of self-righteous indignation, Seth brought down the sword. The razor sharp edge caught Osir on the wrist. With one quick swipe his right hand was gone. Together they watched it as it lay on the floor for a moment, writhing and bleeding.

Outwardly composed and seemingly unaffected by the loss, Osir softly spoke," So this is how it ends. Our journey together is over. I will not even have the opportunity to breathe the air on the New World, the shining world of grace and beauty that we envisioned together. After all we have been through you will deny me even this?" He saw the hatred and resolve in Seth's eyes. Bowing his head and placing his hand over his heart in the symbolic gesture of their faith, he spoke, "Then farewell my brother. May you one day perceive the error of your ways and embark once more on the journey towards clarity and wholeness. From the depths of darkness to the eternal light. I prepare myself for the great transition. In the name of truth, in the name of love and the one Creator, in the name of all that I hold dear, I relinquish my body."

Seth raised the sword again. He sliced through Sir's right elbow and the forearm fell. Osir never said a word, he just stared at Seth, his eyes filled with sadness and compassion. This only infuriated Seth even more. He raised the sword again and sliced Osir at the shoulder cutting off the last of his right arm. Blood poured forth from the wounds and Osir began to go pale. But his eyes never wavered and it seemed as if he was seeing into the depths of Seth's very soul. Infuriated by this response Seth continued to wield his sword. Now he took off the left arm slicing it again at the wrist, elbow and shoulder.

Osir just stood there staring at him without arms. Drunk on the power of his actions, Seth let his fury completely overwhelm him. He raised the sword and sliced Osir three times. The sword was so sharp that the movement sliced through both of Osir's ankles in seconds. With the next cut he ran the blade through, right above his knees and then his thighs. Osir's body stood for a long moment and then it crumbled to the floor. But before this happened, Seth swung the blade through his torso and then his neck. The body tumbled to the floor a lifeless ruin. With a look of pure evil in his eyes, and a smile of wanton pleasure on his lips, Seth raised the sword one last time and came down. Osir's penis was separated from the groin and it fell to the floor. This last act was the single greatest insult of their culture and Seth had just finished doing it. His dark deed was complete.

***** Lost in thought, Ra closed the large oak door behind him. He heard the thud echo as the door shut. He strode down the hallway towards his mother's chamber. His breath still labored with the air of the New Earth. How could he tell her that Seth was still out there, hiding somewhere, looking for an opportunity to destroy them? How could he tell her that they had failed once again to capture him? With eyes lowered, he entered his mother's chamber to find her sitting on her large chair, tears running down her cheeks. As always, her elegance, beauty and graceful demeanor filled him with a sense of warmth. Her long dark hair and pale face smiled back at him. "Mother, why do you cry?'

Ast gracefully wiped some of the tears from her face and gestured to him. "Ra, my son ,come sit with me.'

Ra sat on the wide seat next to Ast. Wrapped in the sweet fragrance that naturally exuded from her body, thoughts came to him about the many times that he had seen his parents, Ast and Osir, sitting on this same chair, holding hands and discussing some important subject. He quietly listened to her slow breathing.

"Are you so sad?"

Ast took his hands in hers and looked him deeply in the eyes, "I miss your father so much that I cannot even put it into words."

Ra remembered once again how Seth had killed his father in a dark fit of rage and jealousy, how he had dismembered him with his sword. He remembered how they had laid him to rest here on the New Earth when they finally reached their destination.

"Your father gave me great strength. Even though I know that his spirit lives on, I am still alone, haunted by the image of his death. I feel as though a part of me has traveled with him into the dreamtime. Now that Seth has brought the power of evil into this world, I no longer care to be fully present here. "

Ra took a deep breath and walked over to the window. The light from their Great Ship was just appearing over the horizon. Soon it would rise in all of its splendor and luminosity. He knew that it would orbit this planet for many millennium. Ra hoped that the sight of the Great Ship in the night sky would help the first children of this New World, and indeed all of the children yet to be born on this planet, remember his family's struggle to cross the vast ocean of space. Ra hoped that it would always remain in the sky as a reminder of the effort that he and his family had made to save themselves, and their race, from certain death back in their former home. As the ship rose over the nearby landscape, it reflected the light of the sun so brightly that one could actually see it at night. Mon had told him that the Great Ship was so large that it's gravity actually pulled on the seas of this new world and made them rise and fall with it's passing.