Crematorium for Phoenixes Read Online Free PDF

plans.
    “Lord, I think it’s time to introduce
yourself and what we should do,” one of the men ventured.
    “You can call me Tammuz. I will be brief. I
need you to hunt demons, but I cannot promise you salvation. Such a
thing people receive only in cheap or real stories with the gods.
Here, you will get only death. The monsters that we will meet
guarantee that. I have a challenging life. I won’t promise to make
your lives easier or different. I don’t have divine powers, but I
am headed to kill people with such things. You must help me.”
    There was an audible but distinct gurgling.
It was as if the men had found themselves confronted with an
invisible well placed in front of a fence that was solid and high,
made of rough, hard plaster and masonry. It was as if they had
crashed into such a thing at full force.
    “Talk a little more plainly, Tammuz. Only
those fortunate chatterboxes, inflated with hydration, or insane
prophets speak in this way,” said the first among the men,
Sharukin.
    “Well then, I will try to tell you
everything from the beginning.
    “After changing the cycles, the long
centuries that measure human life, people learned how to travel
between the worlds and between time itself. There, above us, were
spread about belts and girdles of stars where we built cities. They
resembled the appearance of crystal crowns or spirals on the spokes
of wheels; they were circles within circles of satellites. In such
a star town I was born.
    “Floating among the clouds of dusty systems,
we diverged, we disappeared, and we reappeared, moving in the
vacuum.
    “Cities, our mothers, produced colonies that
in their turn became the basis of more locales. Humankind grew and
diminished like a pounding body that waged war. Such things over
time blurred into little more than stardust.
    “Mastered—we eventually mastered time
travel.
    “We were present at the creation of life, at
the appearance of the first man, at the birth of the first
civilization. Our presence created entangled threads within
time.
    “Once put on this road, many of those sent
forth turned away and began to act on their own, weaving new
creations from the fibers present in the world. Doing so has
amended every moment of our existence, so my mission and that of
many others is to kill, to give life, to build, and to destroy—all
in the name of time.”
    “So what’s the difficult part?”
    “It is a hard task because I have to kill.
But I also often have to leave in place the head of kingdoms,
tyrannical or utopian. There are those who raise the flags of a
thousand nations from subcontinent to subcontinent. There are
people who are willing to destroy those that are preached
unconditional love.”
    The men fell silent, soaking in the horror
and shocked by what they had just heard.
    “You will do all this?” asked Sharukin.
    “Yes, my friend, we will perform such deeds.
And the others like us may be forced to liquidate us, even if we do
the right thing as long as the timeline imposes it. Maybe in the
end, if we do not die, we will become that which we will fight, if
time demands it. Now you know some part of the truth. Let’s focus
on getting the airship to Crete.”
    The men ran to their seats and turned the
steel sheet and rubberized wheels. They moved the throttles and the
great zeppelin shrugged its flaps. It shook its plump body, made
some tentative maneuvers, and with its propellers rattling pushed
forward.
    Thus buzzing with the cycle of roaring
engines, which spoke for the pilgrimage itself, the machine gained
momentum and dressage; it surfed on the winds.
    The Behemoth perhaps formed a totally
inappropriate but most habitual thread of humanity because modeled
from the Creator, mankind also flies like the wind to the four
corners of the world, stealing breaths before breathing in a
handful of mud. That’s why man tempts fate like a blossomed flower
spinning in its delicate beauty.
    Moving like a lit cloud along the shining
edges of an