Read "The Flight to Lucifer" by Harold Bloom online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Valentinus examined the temple grounds spread out in the valley below him. Night was coming on, but Valentinus was in no haste to descend. He hoped first to remember just a little more, since he needed to consult an oracle precisely on his difficulties in remembering. But he despised oracles and felt particular scorn for the temple of Hermas, to which he had come.
Memory had been failing in him for a long time. He slept little, because he could not bear his nightmares. In the few hours he had slept since being on Lucifer, he had dreamed again what he knew was a recurrent dream. In this, he wandered in the muddy world of the Kenoma, a wilderness of emptiness and desolation. There, amid the mud, he saw gold shining forth. He ran through the muddy void as rapidly as he could, but when he came up to the gold, he found instead a newly born male child lying peacefully in the mud. The baby spoke, trying to utter his name, but the language was unknown to Valentinus.