[Certain]

Zenland: This verse was really good, probably the best I've seen from you. I loved it from the opening, where it felt like we were dropped in naturally mid-conversation. This reminded me of a scene from a kung-fu movie, where the master is teaching Zen patience to the pupil. The master was full of knowledge, and he was the one the army feared. But when he died, he gave his strength to the student. It's nice to use a little escapism in a story from time to time, and this felt like escapting the real world in favor of a more epxressive one. There was a lot of religious significance to this. But I felt you could have handled the writing of the knower's death and the recognition from the troops a little smoother. Shifting out to where the troops were for their thoughts seemed unnecessary; I would have preferred you stuck with one vantage point throughout, especially since we hadn't even been warned of the lingering army earlier. Dialogue this overt normally really bothers me, but here it felt like an important part of setting up the knower's spirituality and depth. It's great to see this level of originality here, particularly when the writing is mostly crisp.

King Ra.: I'm curious why you avoided the names we use much more often: Osiris, Isis and Horus. I'd heard of Ausar as another name for Osiris and knew the Osiris myth pretty well because mythology always was a favorite, but I don't recall ever hearing Auset or Heru used. (I looked them up and found they were the un-Anglocized names, which alone may justify your decision.) Anyway, that point is irrelevant. This was a very cool take on the topic, wrapping your own user name into the verse in a way with the well-known Egyptian myth. And I liked the logical connection you formed. This actually read like a persuasive essay in rhyme form, an interpretation of how the Osiris myth has defined modern religion's goals. I wish you had taken more time on that second stanza and less on the first, developing connections to how all religions ultimately are praising the sun. I'm not sure the connection to the Egyptian myth was as strong as you made it out to be because Set was not the God of night but rather generally viewed as the God of the dessert, with the battle being more about rain than sun. Still, had you not spent so much time developing that angle, you could have won me over with a wider variety of religious connections. As is, you presented a persuasive essay that wasn't backed by enough. And you were going against a really original story that also had strong religious overtones.

Vote: Zenland