Seekers of the Gods

[Vigil StarGazer]

Excerpts One: The Sacred Wall

 

The smooth cave wall was non-descriptive at first. Weathered by age alone the walls were smooth to the touch. A hand, equally aged, brushed up against these ancient stone, and dust lingers around the air as a magic glow slowly consumes the surface. Traces of magic ran across the wall like an oncoming flood, filling the long forgotten trenches and ridges until the walls itself became shimmering white with power. The customary thunder followed forcing the dark shadow a step back, but when the dust was cleared the whole cave itself glowed with primitive drawing of events a long forgotten past…

 

…A band of creatures with flailing arms and lizard like tail slaughtered a bunch of wooly horned creature’s village beneath the crescent moon, leaving one female to weep for her lost partner. The pictogram representing the female was truly sophisticated for such a backward race at a backward time, but It was something more then the drawn figure that drew attention. That female figure has the sense of… worship? Faith? Devotion? Whatever it was her face has the expression of anguish, sorrows, all meld with determination and a swirl of infinitely complex feelings. Her eyes gazed to the east, and you can almost hear her scream in the most primal rage in a time before words was even invented and feelings and emotions are only exchanged by the simplest syllables. Her message was simple: Why does everyone have to die? Why must there be suffering? What is the meaning of all this if everything all fades to dust in the end? …All these thoughts compressed into a single scream, echoing in the age-forgotten cave, echoing into the reader’s mind.

 

And then there was an answer. From the distant horizon the sun rose. The first break of light shine onto his beloved’s corpse. The man sucked air into his lungs again and coughed from his wounds, but he will live. On the last set of cave carvings, the wooly horned races had a perfectly rounded stone disk upon another piece of rock as they all bow toward it, and toward the female, the first cleric of the sun god, now wearing a circular stone charm around her neck.

…

 

Excerpts Two: The Etticapse’s Tale

 

The chieftain was mad, and both his heads sulk while he sat in the depths of his cave. The plain Lizardmen was nothing compared to the mighty Etticaps. Lizardmen got great sharp stick and we got rocks and two heads! Yet the Faunlings had grown powerful and they got nothing but hands? What Chieftain Snug and Snot does not understand how these puny creatures can make Lizardmen run away. Igor and Vark, the strongest of the etticaps want to go see and slaughter those puny ones. He said Snug and Snot are weak and fear even these small things. Yet Snug and Snot was strong in the head and smash Igor and Vark, and he called me and Ole over. What use of me and Ole? we don’t know. We are small and weak, almost as small and weak as the Faunlings. When we came to Snot and Snug they grab me by the arm and then rip Ole’s head off my body. It was very painful and I miss Ole much, but me afraid of chieftain still. Then chieftains took horns from a dead faunlings and stick it to my head and then cover me with sheep wool. I fear greatly because even with the wool and horns I’m no look like faunling, but when chieftain told me go to at night I feel safe. I miss Ole much when I walk alone to find faunling, and when I found them they are dancing around a great stone. I dance with them and feel power, not just strength like chieftain but power like the sun and warmth and thunder. Me not feel so good, but have to keep dancing or faunlings will know. I watched as a faunling, that we attacked early that day being dragged to the stone. I know he dead because Pong and Dong throw a heavy stone to smash his head, but a old faunling came. He rubbed the stone on the faunling’s body and the faunling walked again! The other faunlings shriek and dance some more around the stone, then they went back to sleep. I walk back to chieftain and tell him about the big round stone, and the next moon came Etticapse, Lizardmen, and Bug-man went to faunling and kill them. We smash the big round stone and we smash the old man too. We took stone disk from old man and smash it too, but chieftain was still not happy. The next day we took head from dead faunling and pile them on where the stone was. Snug and Snot stick old faunling’s head on a Lizardmen’s stick and then stand it up on the pile of heads. Blood leaks out of the pile and flies swarm over the head. Then chieftain howled and bow toward the heads, and then all Etticaps bow and howl too. The more we bow the strong I feel, until I can feel the same like last night when Faunlings dance around stone, but now I feel the fire, the thunder, and the smashing of enemies inside me. The Lizardmen began to bow too and the bug-men ran away. We bow and howl until its dark again but we feel strong. Tomorrow we will kill more faunlings to make more piles of heads…

Edited October 24, 2004 by Vigil StarGazer