Ultimo Magnus Opus

“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.” ― Thomas Mer 

In a town that resembles the sophisticated and exquisite living of ancient Paris and Italy, people treat art not just an endeavor or an output of aesthetic spring well of their minds. There is neither religion nor science in this place but the only thing they revere and give such an effort to master and develop for their life time is to create the Ultimo Magnus Opus, the master piece of all master pieces. This is no limited to composing complex and euphoric sonatas or painting of other worldly subject using the most bizarre medium. Everyone aspire to be the maestro that will captivate not just the senses of people who’s focus is strictly in physical sense but nevertheless they wanted nothing but to transcend the soul of man through arts; to evoke the fleeting highest experience more akin with spiritual enlightenment ( or perhaps even more than that) . This is their way of living and this is how they make their way into the grave: as an artist. It is safe to say then that this place is never running out of creativity and resourcefulness. Every citizen in this place regardless of their status in life possesses an innate inclination towards different kind of artistic expressions.

The news boy is actually an expert lute player. Besides dough and bread, bakers also shape and mold words into delicious poetries. An old kinder garden teacher can compose a brilliant toccata while singing with puerile songs for the children. Inspectors and policemen are magnificent dancers when they are not busy pursuing vandals who always paint large murals that, although masterfully made, consist of repugnant themes. Even that mute and dingy vagabond that always beg for alms in front of the Cathedral can sketch all the establishments and face’s of the people just by looking at them with his glinting eyes.

Everything they made is for the sake of art for art is their god. Their alpha and omega.

There is a saying in this Elysian field for artist that the blood of its people are not just color red but the shade of all the colors of the rainbow. Though many are into many forms of art, majority of them have a highest subtle regard with painters who are creators of vivid and if not almost real images with just a flick and swish of their brushes dip in dizzying and unknown combination of colors. Painters are worshipped and adore more than any kings and queens in the throne. That kind of treatment seems enough to entice young and aspiring artist to compete with one another to create the Ultimo Magnus Opus through the canvas. Among those young bloods who choose the canvas as the medium of his dream to create the still elusive opus (which is also still belong to the causal plane for it still haven’t manifest in reality) is Kane van Deem. But unlike his competitors who have the resources and excellent talent with colors and strokes, Kane is quite inferior. Born as an orphan, at the age 10 he works as an artisan to support himself. Obviously like his people, he has the inborn prowess in arts. He had begun to paint at the age of 11 (which is quite too late for children in that place begun painting and composing at the early age of 5 until 7). His first art piece is a portrait of a stranger; a lady that he always see in the cathedral every Sunday.

 His co – workers who are artist themselves regard his work as too simple and average, lacking of spark or anything that will be a potential for the ultimate master piece. He just use a worn out canvasses of a vain painter that is too good to throw away all his old canvasses every time he create a mistake of splashing the wrong color in his first stroke. His brush and colors are all improvised; he made a brush out of horse hair which he secretly cut from a horse in the stables of their master and his colors are leftovers from the art schools after they invade Baroque styled cathedral or the intricately designed wretched temple outside their town.

Clearly, Kane is out of resources to buy any high quality materials for his work. But that’s not the only dilemma he is miserably struggling too. While his contemporaries are already rich in their own way to provide materials for their master pieces, they also have far superior talents in painting compare to Kane’s too simple and too plain art works. Kane can only create paintings on the level of a toddles master piece in their town. It’s just a nonsensical speck compare to the tantalizing paintings of his acquaintances.

At first he believe that in time he can improved his average to below average master piece but as the quest to create the Ultimo Magnus Opus stretch to the farthest extreme, he found out that he lack of all the things a revered artist must have in order to continue towards the grand quest.

Years passed and artists become bolder to the point of trying methods that are beyond normal just to attain the much coveted works of art. Some dare to travel far realms of unimagined beauty to gain brand new insights while others try to cross the boundary between the living and the death to meet dead spirits to heed their suffering and turn it into inspirations. Many try a lot of unusual ways in creating more real and more subtle master piece but to their dismays, all is vanity underneath the sun. Worse is, tapping the unknown comes up with a horrible price yet the artist didn’t care at all with what they have to gave up to create the greatest art piece.

Kane heard a certain painter with the name of Burgson who travel into the depths of the Sleeping Primal Forest of the North. The forest is the known dwelling place of savage primal beast that isolated themselves to the human world ,for their savagery that even the wildest lion or wolverines cannot match, will bring death to men. Legendary dire wolves and bear with mystical fur of ornate patterns as well as the Nightmare, a gargantuan stallion whose skin is as dark as the night and its mane are like flames from the ninth hell are found in the huge and forgotten forest. Burgson manage to get the skin of dire animals including the fiery mane of the Nightmare to create an artwork of fantastic collage of furs and skins from these beasties.  However, before he finished his opus magnus, he transformed into feral beast and lost his civilized and stoic spirit. He run amuck in their hometown and devours anything in his sight. Elders say that he has been possessed by the Primal entities of the forest without him noticing it. Burgson didn’t finish his artwork for his life ended at the mercy of hooded executioner’s garrote.

The same fate also happens to the blacksmith of the town whose name is Asahir. He made a pact with the wizards of secrets arts that accidentally visit the town. The pact, as they say makes Asahir to gain access to the chaotic arts of arcane, the energy of pure supernatural forces said to combined in order to create the world. Asahir, a simple blacksmith who loves to paint landscapes learn to manipulate fire, water, and lightning. This, in his opinion is the perfect material instead of the ordinary oily color pigments used by ordinary and traditional painters. He uses the forces of nature to make an ethereal painting that will last for a lifetime. But as he tries to combine this wild and unstable energy, the whole town discovered that Asahir loses his mind. He didn’t able to command chaos, instead, chaos becomes his master and in turn his soul churns into the endless pit of void. Now, our blacksmith is locked in a deep foreboding dungeon laughing and crying and screaming. He act sometimes that he is burning in hell, or drowning in the vast ocean and in rare times, he call out the names of forgotten and abhorred gods.

But instead of getting scared, the people in Kane’s town become more obsess in searching and seeking inspirations and mediums to create the still uncreated master piece. The obsession turns to mania that later on consumes the people to unquenchable desire and spit them out for they are already losing their self and their lives just for the sake of art of course. Their craving for the Ultimo Opus Magnus let them forget to do their daily routines for their minds are always occupied in thinking how they can create master piece and what should they do to make it possible. Soon the whole town slowly turns into drudgery. The pompous town of benevolent art geniuses becomes a wasteland of barbaric men hiding under the skin and cloth of dignified artist.

Kane is now 20 years old and he stopped painting anything. He doesn’t touch any canvas or paintbrush for a year now. Still an artisan and utterly living in solitude, Kane felt more pity to his neighbors than himself. They are not the same anymore. The same people whose love for arts before are more like driven by humane passion rather than madness and disturbing zeal. He misses the way they embrace art and yet it didn’t possess them or the other way around. They co-mingle with art without dominating and submitting one another. Like blending contrasting colors to create a one single and harmonized shade of new colors, Kane’s town used to have that kind of relationship towards art. Different and yet complementing. Existing without compromising one another. Art and men are one and inseparable for they are one and a single entity that rule and reign to beautify this world.

Kane begun to ponder as he walk along the dark streets of his hometown. Tumultuous cries are heard in the entire town; voices of madmen arguing, debating, ridiculing one another to the point of bashing each other with their canvases and splashing one another with sulphuric colors. Burnt flesh and agony rose like a fetid smoke in the air. With a deep sigh, Kane stop for awhile in his track and look up in the sky. Even the heavens are all gone awry too with its black and grey stripes than envelops the whole town with a baneful radiance. Suddenly, needle like rain showers their town. Kane ran swiftly towards the nearby shade which is the cathedral in the western part of the town. He enters the cathedral all soaked up and chilling like he bathed with freezing water for an hour.

Their cathedral if you ask is an understatement of a real and typical cathedral. There is no image of saints or crucifix that fills the spaces inside the holy place. There are rows of chairs neatly organized with stained glasses of prismatic color greeted those who stay at the cathedral to paint or just to wind up. At the edge of its pathway, only empty alcove is seen by many. The cathedral is and always be an empty place since this town is established. No one knows why there are no any symbols or any motif of divinity inside of it. Rumors say that the cathedral is once a temple for an unknown god who died in the mountain of skulls and rose again after that. But today, the cathedral become a hallow place where artist who seek a silent refuge can practice or gain inspiration.

During the time when the people of the town is still sane and contented with doing their own best to create the Ultimo Magnus Opus, many visit the cathedral for they believe that staying inside while contemplating can give a sudden surge of inspiration that will lead you to create beautiful artworks. Unfortunately, when the people begun to go outside their town for their thirst for inspiration continues to dry their spirits, the cathedral become a deserted place. Only the beggars flock inside now for cover during rain or snow.

  

Although beautifully designed with stained glass of divine art works that boast of faces and creatures that only seen in the realms of the cosmos, no one has ever thought that this innocuous art work that surrounds the cathedral seems is  living and breathing art works. Kane, who is perpetually alone that time witness for the first time how this art came to life while lightning flashes outside; giving him a split second yet continuous light to witness it. At first he thought he is just hallucinating or perhaps tricked by the dizzying blink of light but when he focus his sight on the stained glasses, those creatures and faces begun to move and with just a minute they begun to came out in the art work, leaving the stained glass broken and shattered with their movements. They are somewhat slow but exude a certain ancient grace. Startled with fear that assault his mind like piercing daggers, Kane drop to his knees and cower. The sheer terror he felt that time clamp his feet and arms like a trap that left him open and vulnerable to something he still couldn’t comprehend.

Kane’s breath begun to shudder as he heard the footsteps of creatures coming forward to him. His heart begun to pound his chest like a sledge hammer that topples his rib cage. He closed his eyes and begun to chant words; prayers that he never recited nor speak off. Then unexpected silence echoes within the halls of the cathedral. Only the battering rain drops are heard with booming thunder that reverberate the walls.

A slanting ray of light begun to penetrate to cowering image of Kane like a bright and burning spear that carefully aimed his being. He felt a warm radiance that begun to invigorate him as if the brightness starts also to course through his veins in the form of fire, little by little driving away the tremble in his body due to sheer fear. Now, as if the shining ray gravitates him, Kane’s body begun to move towards the light. With curiosity laden with confusion and somewhat unexplainable feeling of benevolence, he stand up with his feet to find out where does the ray of light coming from.

The creatures from the stained glass now surrounded the 20 year old boy, begun to kneel as the light become much stronger. Kane realized that the light is coming from the circular ceiling of the cathedral. The light from the ceiling already match the brightness of the sun and yet it doesn’t burn nor singed his body. In Kane’s perspective, the mystical light shine like the noon sun but its radiance is as soft as the moon. A sudden surge of yearning and love make the young lad raise his arms into the light which is now washing the entire cathedral. As Kane look into the brightness that never blinds him, he acquired a brief visions of vast sea of stars, people with gentle faces and broad and vigorous wings, a tree with a long serpent coiled into it and a man between walls of waters that seems like he commands.

Before the vision end, the last scene that Kane has seen is a bloodied man hanging in a cross. The man look gentle and benign but sorrow and hardship is trace with every lines of his face. People around him are divided into people who mock and shout insults to him and group of people who are weeping and grieving on what happened to the man. Kane stare at him with much sympathy and sadness until the man in the cross stare at him too. His eyes, though smeared by his own blood, reflect an eternal love flowing from the man to Kane. The lad never noticed that warm tears are falling down his cheeks like water fall. He never felt something like this in his entire life. It is more subtle or heavenly sensation that nothing can be compared of. Even the much pursuit Ultimo Magnus Opus that nobody really has the capabilities to create for now in front of him the only person who can, without any paint brush or canvass, can manifest the real Ultimo Magnus Opus.

The man in the cross smiled at him as he reached out his hands to Kane. His hands are punctured with blood flowing it. The blood touched Kane’s forehead and with that, the man smiled to Kane and said that he can still save his people. Then everything fades away in an instant.

The heavy rain continues to roar and the creatures are already gone inside the cathedral. After the last vision he saw, Kane now is left alone in the darkness. His eyes still swelling with tears begun to twinkle or perhaps spark amidst the deafening thunder. Kane’s eyes begun to reflect eternal love that the man in the cross possess. Finally, the people will witness the Ultimo Magnus Opus.

Loud screaming accompanies the cracking voice of the thunder. Even with the harsh and cruel message of the heavens above, they never seems to care and continue to thrash one another in chaos. A man suddenly took his revolver inside his jacket and start aiming it to the quarreling people in the street. But before he pulls the trigger, a hand from nowhere grab his arm with a tender yet strong grip.

The man with the revolver looks at the man who stops him from starting a bloody carnage. He only sees a warm smile with gentle eyes that with a trace of slight sadness. After that the man didn’t know that he is now following the man. In the midst of turmoil, everybody stop as they feel the presence of the man with an inky red blood that flowing from his forehead. Within a minute the whole town followed the mysterious man as if they are seeing a being with overpowering aura of benevolence.

After half an hour, the town people find themselves inside the cathedral. Their attention is drawn towards the man who is now standing in front of them.

“I already know how to create it” said the man with his gentle voice.

“Create what?” the crowd though dazzled, ask in unison.

The man with bloodied forehead smiles at them as he took the revolver and aims it in his head.

In just a second the whole cathedral is filled with blood that flowing from the man in front of them. At first the blood color is red then suddenly it glows with radiance of heavenly kind. The blood spread along the walls, windows doors of the cathedral. Then the redness change into different shade of colors of rainbow. Within a minute the multi colored blood begun to paint something that make the people wallow in tears that never in their life have never been shed. Some tremble in their knees with unexplainably bliss. Others shout with joy that never have been seen in their faces. But few just stay silent as their breath are taken away for what they are looking for their in their entire life time has finally appeared right before their eyes.

The whole cathedrals become a big canvass where a painting of the town people is seen. They are laughing while merrily doing their day to day routines. The painting depicts the happiness that the people lose after they pursuit with the Opus begun to blind them, disabling their mind and spirit that the greatest art work lies not in the nonliving slender body of a paintbrush nor the smelly and countless pigment of colors or even the white blank canvas. The greatest master piece of all is within themselves when they begun to be find the human inside in everything they do. The human in which resides the perfect beauty of the heaven. The human where God reside as well.

That is the day when the people and the whole world begun to see the real Ultimo Magnus Opus. That day the sun becomes much brighter than before.