The Unexpected
The State of the Substack:
Greetings friends. I’m sorry that this chapter has taken so long to get to you. Real life can be obnoxiously difficult sometimes. I’m getting married, which means tons of planning, information gathering, and decision making. I’m also going to be moving yet again to be with my true love, which will mean more packing and driving and such. This substack may yet go quiet again. Never think that I’ve forgotten about it though! I have every intention of continuing to write as long as I can.
Below follows chapter 5 and an ancient myth from Sunlock’s past. I’ll leave it to you to tell if the fall of the old gods contains a grain of truth to it.
Chapter 5:
I rested my head on my arm, peering through the corner of the window, most of my body shielded from the gaze of the guards below.
They were thin, approaching emaciation. Some of them twitched when they moved. I wondered at how they had mustered up the discipline to go this far without deserting the chaplain. Faith was a hell of a drug.
At my side, Yuri crouched, licking at an empty food can. I heard gurgling coming from his stomach.
“How many are there?” He queried with a nervous voice.
“Can’t be more than ten outside.” I whispered back. We wouldn’t stay here long. Just long enough to observe the movements and patterns of the guards before continuing on to map the rest of the abandoned buildings around Zealot’s refuge.
Of particular interest to me was the ledge from which Yensir had made his improbable jump. We were almost there. I wanted to see if there were any traces left of him there; perhaps a supply cache?
From this distance, the building in which Zealot was encamped induced strange feelings in me. The curves and folds between its asymmetrical segments caught the eye and dragged one’s gaze in strange tracks. The building itself was of gray slate, but the windows were stained in red and green patterns that conjured unsettling resemblances. I thought I picked out faces, or perhaps talons, or maybe thorns. Maybe I was just starting to lose it.
I pulled away from the window, before creeping out of the room with Yuri in tow.
A faint, worried Yuri whispered my name “Haye?”
“Yes? What is it?”
“Do you see any way in?”
I glanced back at him. “Not yet.” He said nothing, but I intuited that wasn’t his only question. “What’s on your mind?”
“I don’t know if it would really be helpful if I said it.”
We took a right into a deserted room, finding a couple of stone benches to rest on. We were far enough into the interior of this building that I felt comfortable raising my voice barely above a whisper. “It’s better for us both if you get it off your mind before we continue.”
Yuri sighed and sat on the bench opposite me.
I looked him over. I’d never known him to be this despondant. The journey had taken a horrible toll on him. His beard was unkempt, his hair greasy. His eyes flitted about the room, and he fidgeted constantly. If I had seen him before the voyage in this way, I wouldn’t have recognized him.
I must have been unrecognizable myself.
“It’s stupid. I don’t even know why I should be bringing it up now.”
“Speak.”
He sighed. “I don’t know how much more of this we can collectively take. I don’t know how much I can take.” His hands started to shake. “This whole thing is madness.”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“The others… Tian’ Xi sounded like she might have cracked back there. Dr. Ininsir’s close. I can sense it. I’m close. I can feel it.” He pulled up his legs against his body and started to rock back and forth. “I’ve been seeing things in my dreams, Haye.”
“What kinds of things?”
“It’s like a figure. It watches me. It has no face. Just a head. It’s very indistinct. I’m surrounded by darkness. When I try to run away from it, it starts to run at me. I wake up before it reaches me. I haven’t been sleeping well. It’s always the same dream.”
The description was familiar. I glanced nervously out of the room. Were we alone?
In spite of my concerns, I reached forward and put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “Hey. It’s just a dream. OK?”
He looked at me again, uncertainty on his face.
“You’re going to be fine. You’re not going crazy, and you’re not going to crack.”
I stood up, walked over and bent down, embracing Yuri. “It’s going to be ok. I promise. This place is messing with all of us, not just you. I’d be more worried if you weren’t having nightmares.”
I felt his rough hands reach around me before gripping me in a tight embrace as he shuddered with repressed sobs. This was such a change from the ruddy cheerful man I once knew. To say I was disturbed would have been an understatement. I patted his back to reassure him, realizing in the process that it felt awkward to me.
“Thank you. You’ve always been that one hard-ass I’ve looked up to Haye.”
I pulled back with my hands still on his shoulders, confused. I shook him lightly. “Me? Yuri, have you lost your eyes in your other toolbox? I’m… me.” I sighed. “And I recognize that now more than ever.”
Yuri laughed through his quiet unhappiness. “Of course, dummy. You’re you. I don’t call you a hard-ass for nothing. You’re kind of a jerk. But you’ve always pulled through for me. And it takes a lot to scare you. And when you’re faced with a problem, you’re always the one trying to figure out how to solve it instead of falling down and giving up. Whenever I’m between a rock and a hard place, I try to ask myself what you would do.”
I clammed up. I didn’t know how to respond to that.
“Maybe not how you would make friends or not, but you know…”
I sat on the bench next to him, letting the space between us fall silent.
After a while, he wiped his eyes and broke that silence. “And beneath that hard exterior is someone that the others haven’t seen, because they haven’t known you for as long as I have.”
“You’ve seen how I’ve alienated everyone I’ve ever worked with. How I’ve casually walked away from so many people, treating them like so many means to an end. That’s who I am. I didn’t realize it until Nome explained it to me in her own way. I didn’t know her for long and yet she opened my eyes… Yuri, I’m… I’m a terrible person to look up to.” I breathed out.
“No.” He shook his head.
“How is that not the truth?”
There was another long pause between us before he stood up and began pacing around the room.
“Do you remember the job I first met you on?”
I nodded.
“It was a dusty rhythm in Yinau. I’d been pulled into that job… you know the one… with that noble’s vacation home. We were signed on by the Town Council to do our own investigation of why people were disappearing.”
“I remember.” I interrupted.
He stopped in front of me. “I need to say this thing from the beginning. I have to, for my own sake. Can I do that?”
I nodded again, leaning forward as attentively as I could.
“We all go there, the five of us, and scope it out. I didn’t know you then. You were a scrappy young kid, all full of energy and not a lick of sense in your head. You wanted to go in the front door since we had guns, and we all laughed. We crept around the place a bit. There weren’t too many guards, which was far from unusual, but I did remember feeling, well, uneasy that they were all posted at the front. Well away from the villa.”
“We go in the back, over the wall. I’m the first up the grapple, and Jere is right behind me. Atahenir too. Boy couldn’t have been over fifteen. Place was deserted, not a soul in sight, and I just start feeling this dread. This horrible dread.” Yuri scratched his head.
“Jere didn’t think much of it. He thought we were lucky, that we could maybe get easy access to the villa’s record office and figure out where the missing people were. We went from room to room in the place, absolutely nothing. No papers, no furniture, nothing. The place hadn’t been used.”
“There was one room, the hallway to it had a strange lock on it. Jere’s picks kept breaking, so I leaned out the window to look for another way in. We were over the stables. The stables…” he breathed in deeply.
I reached out a hand to his shoulder. “I’m here.”
He cleared his throat and continued. “I went out the window, walking on the roof. I wasn’t sure if it would hold my weight, but there was another window we would maybe have an easier time of entering. Atahenir was behind me. And… And my foot got stuck. It fell through the roof. Atahenir called to Jere to come and help pull me out but… Well he came and… We all… Our weight broke the roof. And then we were in the stables.”
Yuri sat down. “I’d fallen with a beam on my legs. When I looked to my right, Atahenir had fallen in some sort of brush. It looked like sagebrush. Jere was up and yelling about something. I couldn’t understand him. I heard scratching. Scratching. I… heard Atahenir… He was screaming…”
Yuri’s hands drifted up to his face as he started to rock back and forth.
“He… I don’t know what it was… It was big. It twitched. It had many things that looked like eye stalks writhing back and forth. It wasn’t a sagebrush. The twigs were tendrils. It oozed. It was brown and green and sickly. They…” He started sobbing again. “They were growing into him Haye! I could see them moving under his skin. Then parts of him just sort of joined with it. He was melting slowly into the thing, and I couldn’t move to help him! The boy was screaming!”
Yuri fell to crying softly again. I moved off my chair to sit next to him again on the floor. For a while he couldn’t bring himself to continue his remembrances.
“That was the worst part. He was being eaten slowly, piece by piece, and I couldn’t help him. Jere finally threw a lantern on him… them…. It…”
“I’ll never forget those screams as they burned.”
I put my other arm around Yuri as he cried softly. The walls echoed back his sorrow.
“The stables caught on fire. I was trapped. Jere tried to help me out, and got the beam off my legs, but they were broken. The fire burned his hands and he ran out afterwards. I never saw him again until we got back to town.”
“That was why he was drinking so heavily.” I whispered, the memory slipping back into focus.
Yuri nodded. “I couldn’t move. The pain was too much. The fire was closing in around me. I thought I would die in that hell, with that monster’s corpse next to me.”
“And then a short figure, remarkably strong I might add, grabbed me and dragged me out of there.”
I breathed out. That figure had been me.
Yuri looked up at me. “Now you know why I’ve never told you about what happened at the stables.”
“Yes.”
Yuri swallowed. “That young lady who pulled me out of there is still in you, hidden under the years of bitterness that have accumulated around you. The outlaw life… it’ll turn you into a selfish beast if you let it. I never felt like it was my place to tell you. You would have probably bitten my head off anyhow.”
“Yuri… I…”
He shrugged off my embrace. “We’d better get back to scouting out the place.”
I folded my hands in front of me. “Yuri, I’m sorry you had to go through that. And I’m sorry if I was ever awful to you.”
Yuri smiled weakly. “I don’t know how, I don’t know why, but I seem to have escaped most of that.”
***
The group had gathered, studying the crude map I was drawing on the floor. I traced out rough lines with a piece of burnt wood, paying special attention to marking the guard positions around the building with an X.
Unfortunately for us, the overlook from which Yensir had made his jump proved unremarkable. There had been no supply caches, no obvious items that might explain his gravity-defying trickery. It had been a window like any other, maybe of wider dimensions than the others, so as to better fit his frame. There was no hope of us following in his exact path.
Seeing the emaciated condition of the guards gave me an idea though. They were armed, and any person with a gun was dangerous, but their lack of sustenance had to have had some effect on their ability to aim straight. With our recent drop from Yensir’s supplies, we had one up on them on that front.
Maybe we could overwhelm them? Or mount a distraction so that a smaller group could sneak inside? We had to plan out the tactics correctly, otherwise we’d end up dead before we knew it.
“A distraction… that’s your plan?” Dr. Ininsir stated.
“We could make it work.” I rejoined. “They’re on their last legs. We might not even have to fire a single shot. They’re jumpy. If one of us creates enough noise at one end, they’ll call away guards from their other posts.”
“That sounds like you’re making a lot of assumptions about how they’ll react.”
“If that fails, then we can go with the backup plan, which is to…”
“Rush them?”
Tian’ Xi sighed.
Yuri interrupted, “I don’t think they want to die in a firefight any more than we do. We might be able to get part-way up the steps outside of their sight and then weave our way up.”
“Through gunfire? At close range?” Dr. Ininsir exclaimed. “Have you lost your minds?”
“Let’s just settle this.” Tian’ Xi stated simply. “Suppose we get someone in to investigate, who do you propose it should be?”
“Under normal circumstances I would say Dr. Ininsir.” I said. “That little trick with the graffiti back at the tunnel entrance makes me think there might be more information from the Forebears in that building that she could decipher. However, we’re going to need the fastest and most capable person to go in so that should be me.”
Tian’ Xi tapped her fingers. “Of course.”
I blinked. “Would you… rather go in?”
“No. No I think the person that’s putting forward this frontal charge should be the person that goes inside.”
“So… what’s the problem?” I asked.
“Oh the ‘most capable person’ bit. No offense Haye, but the mere fact that you’ve decided to blindly charge at the enemy seems to negate that phrase.”
I growled with frustration. Tian’ Xi was being unreasonably difficult. “Alright, you’ve got a better plan? I’d like to hear it.”
“No. This will do.” She seemed resigned. “I’ll go along with this, but whatever is in that building had better be worth the effort.”
I glanced around at them again.
“If we go into this, we have to go together. We have to support each other. I know we’re fried. I am too. If you have any objections, anything you want to do differently, speak up now.”
Nobody responded.
“Are we all in agreement?” I asked.
***
When we took up our position across from the entrance, I knew the plan was unnecessary.
There was a conspicuous absence of any guards at the top of the steps.
We waited, observing for any indications of a trap. The windows above us looked foreboding and hollow, shaded in darkness. A good spot for a sniper.
“It’s a trap.” Tian’ Xi surmised.
I furrowed my brow. Could they have found out about us? Maybe Yensir had killed them all? Maybe they had just moved on? I couldn’t be certain without a closer look.
I motioned the others to follow me and began charting out a path that led us as close as we could get to the building without being seen. They followed. The time for discussion was over.
I felt fear pumping through me. As much as I tried to zigzag my course, I felt as though a bullet could fly out of nowhere at any moment. The city’s silence fell like an oppressive blanket around me. The dull thump of my boots ricocheted off the walls no matter how quiet I tried to be.
We arrived at the base of one of the steps, lining up one after the other behind one of the promethean banisters. I peeked around the corner. Nothing. Not a single soul. Nobody had fired on us. Maybe we had gotten lucky? Why would they have left though? I didn’t comprehend the situation.
I glanced back at Yuri. “Back me up here, I’m going up.” I whispered.
He nodded in agreement and trained our rifle up the steps as I leapt from cover and began running up the colossal steps. No gunfire met me. I reached the top of the stairs easily. There was nobody up there. I jumped behind the upper end of one of the banisters, panting. I looked around: a small amount of detritus was all that indicated that anyone had ever been here: empty cans, torn fabric, a wood plank... I slumped backward. Where had they gone? Were they indoors?
The others made their way up more carefully soon afterwards. Tian’ Xi kept her eye on the overshadowing windows, but I surmised we would have been fired on already if they had laid a trap for us. This was not what I had expected.
“What do we do?” Dr. Ininsir whispered.
I looked the door ahead of us over. Curving patterns had been carefully engraved into its surface, and spiraled irregularly around and between the triangles that made up the background. Unlike the smooth slate doors elsewhere, large stone handles jutted out at us, tempting us to enter. I gathered my breath before gesturing at the door weakly.
Nobody said anything. We didn’t know what to expect behind those doors.
Dr. Ininsir walked up to the door and set her palm on the handles. She looked back at me, a question in her eye. I nodded.
She pulled.
It took some effort to open the door, which nonetheless swung open with deathly silence. I had been expecting an abominably loud grind, but… nothing. I clicked my fingers next to my ear to see if I had gone deaf. I hadn’t.
I peered inside. Unfortunately my eyes hadn’t yet adjusted to the dark, so I couldn’t see much. I could see that the space inside was cavernous, like a giant temple.
I motioned to the others. We were going in.
The Fall of the Old Gods and the Pyre of Aciyen:
Excerpt from The Tanzanir, by Maleyi
At Sesan’s wickedness, at Aciyen’s evil,
Fate’s scroll closed, and sealed within the deep mountain
The witness against those who came before Midtel.
The ruin of Aciyen and of her old Gods
And ten thousands of years, the reign of mighty lines:
The end was written therein by the wrathful sun.
Judgment was carved against her tributaries
Among the gods in the star-lit halls of heaven.
There came the hand of the sun against the far wall
From Er’s throne, written in a tongue to them unknown.
It was spoken of old: Pyina Zjehamu Sjes,
And to those long ago revealed the meaning:
Your House Is Unworthy.
Forth bright through the sky that Harbinger of the Sun,
Flew then towards the cathedral of the Vasi.
Their pride and disdain towards those just and moral
Would soon smite and cast them down from heaven itself.
The Harbinger came upon heaven as a ghost,
And silently from the realm of mortals’ vision
Unseated and slew the Five Zans of the Vasi
And cast them unto darkness, joined them with their fate
And untenanted the high halls of the Old Gods.
The Five’s descent took three rhythms above the ground.
Each hour their slain bodies grew farther from each other.
And they passed the one after the other over
Against the horizon, except he of lapis
Er of old, patron God of Aciyen itself.
His glory of thousands became bright like the Sun.
As it passed close by his city, all were in awe.
The priests halted their rites, the lords and ladies swooned
In panic and ecstasy at the Revealing.
In that time before he joined the plain ground below
Er of old could be seen by mortals, his arms wide.
His head thrown back, his wine-dark ichor spewing forth,
The lance of the Harbinger run through his broad breast.
The horror of thousands at the sudden Godfall
Was soon enjoined by the unending screams of them
They of Aciyen who felt the thousands’ glory
Unmeant for mortal eyes upon their mortal skin.
The baying of farm beasts, the terror of the crowd,
The crying of the infants, the mothers’ anguish:
There was none like it in the time of the peoples
And we pray for the Sun’s mercy, not in our time.
If a hundred thousand zans were to raise a torch
Then a hundred thousand fingers of flame rise out
Then a hundred thousand embers be birthed from them
That would be like the bright light of the fall of Er.
All they of Aciyen who pledged fast to Sesan
Were then engulfed in divine and terrible flame.
The iron of Sesan’s hall became as water.
The bodies of his subjects became mere shadows.
The corpse of his city became like strong vapors.
Mere smoke was Sesan’s proud folly upon the wind.
Out from Aciyen came a gale upon the land.
It pummeled and shredded all they within its path.
The ground churned like sea beneath the Sun’s wrathful gaze.
Valleys were lowered down, and mountains raised high up.
In faraway lands they spoke with despair and pain
And gnashing of teeth at the fall of the Old Gods.
For to the rightward of Aciyen fell glory:
And ten thousands of years, the reign of mighty lines.
Vasi once worshiped by the uncounted peoples.
Five were they, each now humbled in death and spread thin
Far among lands unknown, with leagues and leagues between.
Their ordained destruction was complete and total.
None could ever find their final tombs or bodies.
Even in song and recitation I now shrink.
Good Zanir, let us leave this accursed recounting
And dwell no longer on the myths of ancient times.