Chapter 4: Gods Damned

Gods Damned

 

“Ok, what the hell was that?” Logan asked as he spun about. Despite the noise sounding like it came from the surround sound at a movie theater, there was no discernable source. Which did nothing at all to make the loud chiming noise less of a threat in his mind. 

 

“Oh, that there was a rye centipede. Nasty buggers who are almost impossible to deal with in an overgrown field. Venomous bite that’s strong enough to kill a hearty man in 10 heartbeats.” The old man’s ramblings on the centipede brought Logan’s thoughts to a halt. He had really just killed that thing with no hesitation. Yeah it had sprung up at him, but his response was violent, and fast. He hadn’t even thought about it. And he might have died. Again.

 

“Oh, well, glad I killed it then.” Logan sputtered out. “I was, I mean, I-I meant to ask what was the noise that came about after I killed it. The loud, resonant one.”

 

Jeremiah’s grizzled face grew weary. For a few long moments, he simply stared at Logan, puzzled, until he slowly ventured forth his answer.

 

“Mayhaps you kindled your spirit, my friend.”

 

That did not qualify as an explanation to Logan. No part of the sentence made sense to Logan by itself, beyond the endearment, and all together, it invited numerous questions from Logan’s singular innocuous query. Therefore Logan was left with only one possible response.

 

“What do you mean by that, exactly?”

 

With this the old man’s face took a pensive turn, no longer confused and more decided in nature. Old Jeremiah proceeded to take a large pipe from an embroidered leather belt pouch. And as he slowly began to pack the pipe with some mysterious blend, the old man launched into an epic tale, the crackling of the campfire his only co-orator.

 

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“Many centuries ago, before the coming of all three Eras, before the birth of life, before this planet, and before even the universe beyond, there was nothing. Then, as if someone willed it to be, everything sprang into existence. All the wide cosmos was born, along with the soil beneath our very feet. However, what made our planet special, beyond the life-giving climate and fertile soils, was that we stood upon the anchor point of reality, and as such, our planet had a guardian. Much had been lost to time, but the guardian's name was Churau, and Churau was the First God.”

 

“For a time, balance existed. Churau anchored the universe through our planet, and our planet flourished. Life arose, and God found himself curious. Eventually sentients came about, and Churau learned empathy. For millennia it watched us in our attempts towards greatness. But when our follies almost broke the world, and threatened God’s directive…Charau knew change must happen.”

 

With this, the old man took a deep drag of his pipe, and then slowly exhaled through his nose. The fragrant aroma drifted across the dying embers of the fire and smeared themselves obnoxiously into Logan’s nostrils. As Logan swiped the air, Old Jeremiah continued his tale.

 

“Instead of erasing us, as was its right, Churau spared us all, and sacrificed itself to bridge the divide. This was the First turning of the Ages, into the Second Ages, a time we know much more about. This was the reign of Apostles, as King of the Gods, the fragment of Churau’s being he devoted to his previous primary directive. All the other countless fragments filled the sky as the stars we see today, and the Pantheon as Gods.”

 

“Once again, the world thrived. The Gods brought in an age of enlightenment the world had never seen, all peoples living as one, for the betterment of all. The beginning of the Second Era was the greatest advancement of science and artistry ever seen, lad, with most of the most sought after knowledge into the modern times being derived from the lost discoveries of those years. However, again, it was not to be.”

 

“As the countless years of the Gods’ lives aged on, they noticed a growing strain on their presence. Beasts grew stronger, and Monsters, aberrations and worse began to appear with greater and greater frequency, while slowly, fear and panic grew. The Gods attempted to guide us, and they made the planet strong, taught us the arts of war and discipline. But we were only mortals, and we mortals were not enough.”

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“Still, for centuries, our ancestors fought against the coming night, never surrendering, praying one day, something might change. And Apostles, or mayhaps some lost remnant of Churau answered all of our prayers. When all seemed lost, once again God sacrificed himself, and his body fell to Earth. As he fell, he blessed all living and natural things with his presence, his essence, and allowed them to reach past the mortal coil if they could just kindle their spark of divinity.”

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To this point, Old Jeremiah set his pipe down, closed his eyes, and collected himself. Logan could tell he was doing something, but he couldn’t quite make out what. Straining his eyes, Logan stared intently at the old man until suddenly he could faintly see a shimmering, bright, naruto swirl below his navel, surrounded by eddies of light flowing in rotations.

 

Logan wasn’t sure, but he could assume the old man wasn’t ‘kindling his spark’, but some other equally vague mystical terminology. Whatever the phrasing, Logan didn’t think it was quite the same as the chiming noise from earlier. After all, the cause of that was evidently Logan’s butchering of the rye centipede, and this new technique looked far too complex for Logan to have done it accidentally in his quasi-berserker state.

 

Opening his eyes, the currents surrounding Old Jeremiah’s core gradually drifted apart, with a small portion being pulled inwards, and the rest dispersing. As that happened, Logan noticed his headache coming back, and as the light show was finished, he relaxed his own eyes again, and Jeremiah’s core faded into his subconscious. Then the old man once again picked up and relit his pipe, settling back into his storytelling.

 

“As grateful as we are for his sacrifice, it came with a cost. Now, the Gods have all but retreated from this world, as most of their attention must go to the stability of reality. Only in times of great need are their voices even heard, and sometimes not even then, causing many to lose faith. Monsters have not increased, but they have not ceased their eternal wars on us either. The world is still unbalanced, and although Humans have been given power, we have lost guidance, so the world still sits in the dark, dying day by day.”

 

Well. Goddamn.

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As Gregor got out of the Sunday morning Mass, he didn’t take the time he normally would to wander the market and chat with people. Instead he blazed his way through the leaving crowds, and raced back to the village manor. Barely stopping long enough to tell the maid Marjory a flustered “Hello”, followed by “Please don’t let anyone disturb me for a couple hours”, he rushed into his room and slammed the door. Of course, with his strength, he couldn’t really slam it or the hinges would break, but it still made a decent boom as it closed.

 

Next week would be his 18th birthday, and as he was becoming a man of the village. Which meant a couple of things, at least here in Alteep village. First, it meant that most of the village would gather at the end of the season and celebrate him and the others who turned 18 over that period. Then, after everyone was nice and toasty, the newly initiated would then declare their intentions. If you wanted to stay, a job and home would be arranged for you. If you wanted to leave however, that’s where things get tricky. 

 

To leave, the village would require something to take your place, a way to compensate for not having you to help out. For most people, they would join the Legion, and send home their wages. However, if Gregor would do that, he could never afford to invest in his own growth, which had led to his current scheme.

 

Gregor, still breathing a little heavy from his rapid pace, leaned over and filched his treasure from its hidden spot under his cot. Over the years, he had filed down the wing stubs until it looked like they were never there to begin with. He still wasn’t sure why it had ever had them to begin with, but Gregor figured it would be easier to explain as just a mythical artifact, if not a unique one. Still, this book was easily worth Gregor's weight in gold, as Gregor recognized its power if it were able to transform a boy with no instructor into the strongest man for miles. 

 

Make no mistake, at this point, Gregor thought, the only things that could challenge him in a fight would be found deep within the Inaug Forest just outside of town. Even then, the old man who lived at the edge of the Forest kept the monster’s ecosystem too stable for any true horrors to rampage.

 

However, that just made gifting Gregor’s treasure to the village that much harder. He knew that he could pull up any page simply from memory, with how much time he had poured into reading it, and with the benefits the techniques themselves provided. Still, this book had symbolized the hope of a heroic future for longer than he had found women attractive. Losing it now would sting, but was necessary.

 

Of course, while holding his most secret possession in his hands, is when Gregor’s father, Mayor Grenneth Rinks barged in. His father started to say something, but the words died on his lips, as his eyes made sense of the tome in his son’s hands.

 

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