Synopsis: The cautionary and gruesome autobiography of Edward Elric, detailing his life after death in a world parallel to his own, where love was a crime and God only pretended to be kind.
Chapters will posted upon completion and linked here in order.
Foreward by Alphonse Elric
Introduction by Senator Roy Mustang
Part One: London The Wages of Sin
"He will settle His arguments with Israel by sending it far away. Like a hot desert wind, He will drive it away. This is how Israel's guilt will be forgiven; This is how its sins will be taken away." Isaiah 27:8-9a
Part Two: Munich The Land of Nod
"In fair Verona, where we lay our scene, From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean." -William Shakespeare; Romeo and Juliet; Act I
Part Three: Alfons Out of Egypt
For each ecstatic instant We must an anguish pay In keen and quivering ratio To the ecstasy.
For each beloved hour Sharp pittances of years, Bitter contested farthings And coffers heaped with tears. -Emily Dickinson; "For Each Ecstatic Instant"
Part Four: Berlin Babylon
Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.
The darkness drops again; but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? -William Butler Yeats; "The Second Coming"
Part Five: Marie The Blood of Saints
He said, Marie, Marie, hold on tight. And down we went. In the mountains, there you feel free. I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, You cannot say, or guess, for you know only A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, And the dry stone no sound of water. Only There is shadow under this red rock, (Come in under the shadow of this red rock), And I will show you something different from either Your shadow at morning striding behind you Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; I will show you fear in a handful of dust. -T.S. Elliot; "The WasteLand"
Part Six: Dachau Judgement Day
"Oh, come, oh, come, Emmanuel, And ransom captive Israel, That mourns in lonely exile here Until the Son of God appear. Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel Shall come to you, O Israel!" -"Oh Come, Oh Come, Emmanuel"; #62, Lutheran Hymnal
Part Seven: Escape Redemption
"Now from the sixth hour, there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour, Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, 'Eli, Eli, Lemana Shabakthani.' 'My God, my God, for this I was kept.'" -Matthew 27:45-47