Chapter 22: Chapter Twenty-two – Strange Enemies

Propitious and Alacritous had walked for three days when they finally came, by night, upon the enemies’ encampment in a hill of boulders. The sun was just beginning to make the eastern sky glow, and for this reason, the small army of gray men had stopped. They were making ready to hide within the crags of the enormous rocks, and there, they meant to pass the day.

The Ancients crouched down behind a lone boulder and studied the scene before them. From their hiding place, their searching indigo-colored eyes took in many details, and the whole scene was extremely strange to them both.

 As their drums rumbled and thundered out a hurried cadence, the strange little men danced wildly around several bonfires while jabbing their spears at imaginary enemies. Like the small desert lizards, they shot out their pointed dark-gray tongues, they bulged out their pitch-colored eyes, and moved their bony gray bodies in twitching movements as they danced. Their ugly faces and cruel expressions made them seem more like beasts than men.

The fell-men were clad in little more than loincloths, and their gray skin was decorated with many strange black marks. They had no hair upon their heads or faces, and all their features were angular. Their noses were very pointed, and their foreheads were slanted backward giving them a primitive appearance.

As Propitious watched the Graylings, her keen eyes finally caught sight of the thing for which she so earnestly searched: a huddled mass of children tied together and guarded by several fell-men.

The Seer pointed wordlessly, and Alacritous acknowledged the direction with a silent nod.

It was easy to tell the children apart from the gray men because the skin of the Ancients still held the dim remnants of the light that once shone brightly in the flesh of the first man and woman. For this reason, Alacritous effortlessly saw the children glowing faintly in the fading darkness.

With quickened breaths, the two young women readied themselves to draw nearer to the encampment. After a moment more of hesitation, Propitious moved from place to place hiding her luminous skin behind rock and boulder. With the same skill, Alacritous followed her every movement.

Thus, they made their way with the stealth of cats and the elegant grace of swans. In their going, their feet made no sound, and their keen eyes saw clearly in the darkness. In fact, the only difference between daylight and dark in their vision was that the world at night was altogether colorless. For this cause, the Ancients called the night, “the gray hours.”

As they drew nearer to the camp, the two young women heard and saw even stranger things. First, they silently passed two guards as they leaned upon their spears and conversed with each other about some topic that made them cackle with cruel sounding laughter.

Overhearing the Graylings’ discussion as they crept by, they were utterly confused, for the men’s words seemed backwards, scrambled, and even upside-down. This was wholly alien to Propitious and Alacritous because the elder-race understood the languages of every fowl, fish, bug, and beast, and yet this tongue was like nonsense.

Next, they noticed that many of the fell-men were sitting by their fires eating black mushrooms. The smell of these mushrooms was so disgusting in their nostrils that it caused them to gag, and they both marveled that these gray men could eat them without vomiting.

Ignoring their stomachs’ protests, the two women continued to carefully draw nearer to the children.

As they passed the next campfire, they saw two of the Graylings passing a flaming branch over each other’s mostly naked bodies, over their heads, and even over their ugly faces in an action that resembled someone washing.

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The little gray men , and all their kin, did this so as to singe off most of their coarse black hair. The foul practice left a nauseating odor hanging thick in the air, and again, Propitious and Alacritous stifled yet more retches.

Then, to their horror, they realized that others among the men were cutting up small dead animals and burning their flesh in the fire. When the meat was only slightly cooked, they ate it eagerly with cruel and hungry grins as scarlet blood trickled down their pointed chins. Seeing them eat flesh, Propitious and Alacritous grew all the more nauseous, but still they disregarded their queasiness and stealthily made their way toward the children.

After this, they came near to a fire where a gray man was using a sharp black stone to chip away pieces of his own teeth and thereby leave them jagged and pointed like the ferocious fangs of a Dragon. When his grisly work was done, he flashed his new hideous smile at his friend who sat next to him. The other nodded with enthusiastic approval and then began to do the same work upon his own teeth.

At the sight of their brutal dental alterations, Propitious and Alacritous cringed with sympathy pains that shot throughout their bodies, and their stomachs seemed to turn within them. Despite this, they went on.

At the next fire that they passed, they saw another fell-man using sticks to remove a glowing-hot stone from the coals of his campfire. When he had retrieved the smooth elongated rock, he carefully handled it with a scrap of leather. A second gray man eagerly stretched himself out upon his stomach in front of the first.

The man with the hot stone approached him, and quickly pressed the stone to the other’s back. There was a sizzling sound, and the man who was being burned convulsed and grunted from the pain as the blisteringly hot stone was dragged across his skin.

When this cruel work was completed, the artist stepped away to reveal a strange symbol burned into his flesh. The mark consisted of a horizontal line with three parallel zigzags rising up from it.

Thrilled over his new body art, they hastily traded places, and thus the process was repeated. When other fell-men saw what seemed to be a novel idea, they began to form a line, and so the smell of burned flesh soon hung thickly in the air.

Propitious and Alacritous paused in their tracks, put their hands over their mouths, and fought to stifle yet more gagging reflexes. It was the closest they had come to vomiting so far, but when the spell had passed, they continued upon their mission.

After they had put some distance between themselves and the Graylings, Alacritous whispered with bewilderment. “Why would they do all those terrible things to themselves?!?”

Propitious started to say that she could never imagine why, but suddenly, a still small voice interrupted her by speaking into her mind.

“The King of Heaven made mankind in His own image.” The still small voice explained. “And because of this, His enemy inspires his followers to deface that image.”

Propitious repeated these words to her niece, and then the two young women hurried to where the children slept. The guards who stood watch over them were leaning upon their spears nodding in slumber.

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