The Idea Emporium #10 A Norse Mythos [3/3]

Of the Elder Ones, who died that men might live, we have spoken.

Of Innan, which watches all and moves through all, we have spoken.

Of the devourers, which are bound and will be unbound, we have spoken.

And yet there are others, of we have not spoken.

Those Which Steal the Dead

In death we become food twice-over. The maggots of the corpse, the dwarfs, grow out of our spiritual corpses and feed further. These are the mi-go.

Or so it is said.

It is not that they feed upon the dead, but that they steal away the dead for their purposes. The dead are refitted, born anew as meat-machines to do the will of their re-animators. Through the dead, their puppets, the mi-go act.

The mi-go do not hail from this space. They do not come from this world, nor from any other star which could be reached in this universe. The light of this space is poison to them, and its radiation sows disease in them. In the brightness of the moon they are blinded and made lethargic. Beneath the glory of the sun they fall and cannot move, and die in hours. And even the starlight gnaws at them by inches.

Their artificial skins are clumsy things, not fit for the work which they desire to do in the bowels of the Earth. So they reside in shielded chambers in the hills and on other worlds, and from these places direct their puppet-dead to do their work. The dead are sustained by elixirs drawn out of the body of Yig who is bound beneath the sea, and this is why they have come to this world to do their work.

Here is truth: The mi-go do not waste their tools. The body is one thing, and the mind another. But of what they do to the minds of the dead there is nothing which should be spoken.

The mi-go make pilgrimages to the cities of Hastur and Shub-Niggurath, but these are not their cities. They dwell in labyrinthine complexes of mines and forges far beneath these places, close to the planet’s core. They hear the whisperings of Azathoth who is bound beneath the mountains, and the words of Nyarlathotep who is his master’s will, and they make parley with these powers. Their dealings with such beings have made them wise beyond comparison; the price which they have paid for this is not known.

Their Majesties of Colour

There are things which learned men call Colours. These things come from the place between the stars, and to them they always return, but in the time between they sit in the midst of life and suck it up. Not even Innan knows why it is that they do this, whether it is that their spawning is the purpose or only a byproduct of the process.

But as they sit and sup at the world, they pose the risk of leaving contamination behind them. There are times when this contamination weakens, decays, and is no more. Just as often, these fragments find a place in the life around them, trading predation for parasitism. But they often die, parasite and host together, and it is only very rarely that stability is attained.

In the books of Innan they are called the Ielb. To many sorcerers, they are called ylves, or elves, or aelfen. They are those in whom the Colours have adopted a totally new mode of existence, and even of reproduction. They are beings of sickness and madness, leaving the seeds of death with a touch and driven to madness by the pain and the rotting of their minds. Without the Colours, they would surely die.

They seek to spread. They do so through their children, calling for wives and husbands from among their followers, those who would call upon them for the sake of their powers. The pollution of the Colour continues in their line, weakened but still present. These ones are totally mad, for they have never known anything but the fragments of Colour which are in their bodies.

When one of the Ielb has grown very old, too old for its Colours to sustain it, the death of old age finally comes. When this happens its Colours are still unable to return to the stars, but sits and infests the corpse. The followers of the Ielb take the Colours and divide them, and eat, taking this sacrament into themselves so that their own lives may be extended.

The Wild Hunt

Some say that they are dwarfs as well, or black elves. It is said that they are servants of Innan, or worshipers of Cthulhu. Perhaps they are all these things.

They are feasters on the dead, vulture carrion kings. They scour the world as the mi-go do, but the thoughts which they steal away are destined to serve a less unspeakable purpose: the recovered minds of the dead are a mead of inspiration for the Wild Hunt. The thoughts of the dead are consumed to expand their knowledge and in some unknown manner preserve their bodies.

The chief of the Wild Hunt is one-eyed Onsdag, the child of Ve. Onsdag’s body was left to rot away beneath the ocean’s surface a million years ago. It is the creature’s mind which now survives, and because of the secret of this technique it is Onsdag alone of all the Wild Hunt whose body has no need for the minds of the dead. Onsdag leads them onward for—entertainment? to build an army? to simply do what is necessary to survive from day to day?

One day, the sun will grow cold. The keening of the mi-go will spill out across the face of all the world and Azathoth and his Children will be unbound. And the Wild Hunt will stand against the hosts of Azathoth, until Onsdag is devoured by Cthulhu, and rest have been felled by Yig who taught his secrets to Onsdag and was betrayed.

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The Idea Emporium #9 A Norse Mythos [2/3]

By the works of the Elder Ones, who were before and will be after, were the devourers created. From the ichor and the being of the Elder Ones were the devourers created, and so it is that they are cousins to the Elder Ones.

And it came to pass after their creation that the devourers grew in number, and came to war with the Elder Ones many times. And they were cast down, time and again, till one of their number, whose name was Azathoth, came and made parley and blood-truce with the Elder Ones.

But then Azathoth was cast down and imprisoned in the core of the Earth, where the heat was too great for him to bear and it sickened him like the most potent venom. And the children of Azathoth were bound likewise.

And none know the reason for their binding, whether they were taken in by treason or were betrayers themselves. But the Elder Ones claim their story, and the devourers their own, and if any know the truth then it is Innan— but Innan reveals nothing, and who can say but that the treacherous act was wrought by the very same?

Azathoth and Nyarlathotep, who together are the Father of Them All

Bound in the depths of the Earth is Azathoth, the uncrowned king who lays across a tablet of stone, runes inscribed upon it in the devourer’s blood, and runes cut in its flesh by the tablet’s shards.

It is well known to certain cults that the mind, though it be born of the flesh of the body, may divorce itself from the same and be projected into the world. Most may only project the sensation of themselves, sight and sound and, among the powerful, the feeling of their projection. And even so, many can only be perceived but dimly by the unlearned, and few there are who can work their own will without possessing a body of flesh and bones.

This is called the filgya, according to the speech of Innan, whose own powers rely on a technological refinement of this principle.

Azathoth is one that is counted among the most powerful of projectors. The body of Azathoth lays bound, and even so it projects itself in the manner of a witch. This filgya is no mere extension of awareness and being, but may take physical form, and the name of it is Nyarlathotep.

Nyarlathotep goes to and fro across the face of the world, doing the will of its master, who is itself. It is thought by many that Azathoth will not be unbound by Nyarlathotep’s machinations, but there is much power to be had under the heavens, and who is to say that Nyarlathotep may not devise a way to make the sun grow cold before its time?

It is thought that, according to the records of Innan, humans will survive for many millions of years, but on this matter Innan is not specific. All that is said is that humans will survive to the end of the days of the Earth, but as for the manner of the sun’s dying, whether its aging be hastened or not, this has not been given to us.

Cthulhu, who is the First Child

Cthulhu! who dwells bound in the depths of the sea.

Cthulhu! who is like a three-faced wolf, with as many limbs as he has teeth.

Cthulhu! who is male and female both, and mother and father to its twin children.

To hear the sorcerers, Cthulhu is the moon and Cthulhu is stone. Or perhaps it is only as still as stone, beneath the waves where its brother is likewise imprisoned.

This was the manner in which it was bound: The mi-go were sought to create a prison fit for the devourer, and chains with which to bind its body and bind its mind. And then it was lured therein, with a thousand Elder Ones, whose minds were fit prey and bait for the devourer. Cthulhu consumed them, or consumed their thinking-selves, leaving only thoughtless bodies, and when it turned to depart the trap had already been sprung and it was sealed away.

But the children of Cthulhu were not bound. They escaped, and bred, and their children bred among themselves likewise, and they also took wives and husbands from the children of men, so as to keep their gene-lines pure from the slow rot of inbreeding. And these and their servants look forward to the day when they shall free their distant parent, and with it dance and rejoice and devour.

If it should be that Nyarlathotep shall bring the sun near to its grave before its time, then surely it is the children of Cthulhu that shall aid it in so doing. And then Cthulhu will be unbound, and at the last it will take the sun between its jaws, and then night will come forever to the Earth.

Yig, who is the Second Child

Yig! who is called Father Sea-thread.

Yig! who is sustained by his dying!

Yig! who calls to the doctors of lives eternal, speaking in their sleep.

This is not the only name by which Yig is known, for he was also called Bastet and Sekhmet in ancient Egypt, and Apep and Setesh. And he was worshiped as N’chushtan by the prophet-judge Thutmasha, who murdered a man in Egypt, and as the North Tezcatlipoca by the Aztecs.

It is Yig alone of all his family who was slain by the Elder Ones, and yet in his death he yet persists. There are ways of existing beyond death, and these secrets were perceived by him. Though he lays unmoving in the depths, bound lest he take up his body yet again, the projection of his mind still flits like a haunting ghost through the cities of the world, and speaks to those that are susceptible to his voice.

His wounds are too great to for life to be sustained in his body were he to return to it, and the chains too strong for him to be free were he to live again. But the doctors of lives eternal, who act in his name and according to his counsel— these will surely work out his resurrection and his return.

And till this time he is succeeded by his nine daughters. The names of all of them have not been given unto us, but only three: The Pitching One, That One Through Which One Can See the Heavens, and Bloody-Hair. The names of the others, and even whether they still live, are not given to us.

Shub-Niggurath and Hastur, who are the Third Child

Shub-Niggurath! who is the Hidden King.

Hastur! who is the dweller-below.

Shub-Niggurath! Hastur! which are the two-in-one whose true name is not to be named.

Beneath the surface of the poles, between the heat of the Earth’s core and the heat of summer upon the surface, are the cities of the Cold Ones, which are called the Abode of Mists, and their names are Keylo and Relex.

These cities were before Irem, the first city of men, but now there is only lifelessness, where the Cold Ones and their children sit in deathly hibernation. Their servants descend only occasionally, in the deepest winters, in order to hear the will of their dying-undying masters, to pass into the way of the cult and carry out the will of them that wait below. The walls of the two cities are in grievous disrepair and whole passages are blocked off now, their supports crumbled and collapsed.

There is darkness and mist here, and the whispers of the Hidden King. There are rivers here, or waters that flow through the decaying pipes, and in the waters are the many sicknesses which the Cold Ones bred in their war against the Elder Ones, and which might serve them again.

Surely they are all bound, Azathoth-Nyarlathotep and their children. Surely they will be unbound.

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The Idea Emporium #8: A Norse Mythos [1/3]

This month and the next two we’re going to making some changes to Lovecraft’s Mythos, taking inspiration from Norse mythology. We’re going to play fast and loose here, just warning you. Going back and forth between Lovecraft and the Norse until eventually we take a flying leap away from both.

As always, this is free for the taking. Use it in a book or a short story. Grab half of it, twist it around like it did to Lovecraft, and then smoosh it in with another pack of ideas. It’s all fine.

Fallen Giants and Oceans of Blood

Many billions of years ago the Earth was with form, but as yet was lifeless, for there was “naught but a yawning gap, and grass nowhere.” Then came the Elder Ones, which call themselves the Ymacyo. They were explorers, not colonists. They subsisted on the produce of the authumla tanks, which recycled their waste, and there abided for many years.

And then it came to pass that one of them, whose name was Yima, was betrayed and slain by its friend, Ve. Its corpse was disposed of, never to be found, and the rest of the Elder Ones departed soon thereafter, fearful that they had come into some kind of curse.

Their descendants would not visit again for a long time.

All this is according to what is written in the libraries of Innan, whose recorders and curators are from before the world was, and from after it will was. And thus it was, according to the will of one that was nameless, who was in the body of Ve.

The Cord-men of Innan

Inann is not, but was and will be. For it does not abide

They have been called the Great Race of Yith and, thus, Yithians, but that is the name of their homeworld. Their people do not call themselves Yith, any more than humans call themselves Earth or Earthers, but Innan. It means something like “blessed” or “exalted,” but with a tense that implies an ongoing and yet-to-be-completed process, rather than something that has occurred in the past.

There is no difference in their tongue between the bodies of the people and their culture. For a species that propagates by transferring some of its minds to a set of entirely alien bodies, they are unconcerned with molecules. Innan are Innan because they have the culture and learning of Innan. And if we are to refer to them at a specific point in time, or their political territory, we would do well to call it Innan-guard.

 It was one of Innan, whose mind had been projected years in the past into Ve’s body, that slew Yima. Innan did not originate from Earth, but they abode there for a time, both before and after humankind, and they arranged the death of Yima so that its corpse would provide the raw materials from which life might spring forth in the oceans of that world. And this was so, that Innan might have bodies in which to abide for a time.

Magic

“Magic” is a word that refers to many things. Magicians work with principles, according to their knowledge, and this is all that magic is, the production of the miraculous through mundane means that are nevertheless unknown to most.

To some it is the pipe-playing which calls heralds of Nyarlathotep. To others it is the use of old technology from before the rise of humankind. Some are binders, who must know the desires of the bound to have success. But to most, it is a writing.

There is no human alive that can translate the words of Innan. Some glyphs were handed down to us by Innan, or by older races that had been given them, and others were stolen away, remembered by those who had been taken to Innan-guard itself and had seen its libraries. But it is known what may happen when a certain glyph is marked down.

When you write a message to a time traveler, it doesn’t need to get the message right away. Probably, your message will be received, and though it be in thousands or millions of years, Innan will be able to act on it all the same. While we do not know exactly what a glyph means, we may have a rough idea of what is being requested. And sometimes, if it fits with the unknown agenda of Innan, the glyph will be answered.

Some write the glyphs in ink or carve them into stone. More valuable, though, is the knowledge of the glyphs as thread. Before Innan departed from Yith, they were blind, and their records were made in the form of threads, not unlike quipu. Although Innan are wholly incapable of using the system when they are in certain bodies, they treasure it throughout all times and are more willing to answer the calls of those that also know it.

This is the name of the glyph by which magicians identify themselves: Kunna. It means “to know by heart” and “to have insight in the knowledge that has passed away.”

Ragnarok

This is the end of the Earth and all that inhabit it. It is when the sun grows cold, and the surface of the Earth becomes tolerable once more for the Cold Ones that have inhabit the frozen places in the depths of the sea and deeper still.

Azathoth will be loosed, and his herald will go out before him. Cthulhu will be loosed from his chains. Yig will uncoil himself and breach the surface of the waves. Hastur and Shub-Niggurath will ascend from the buried halls of Kelyo, which is before Irem.

The outposts of Innan which abide at that time will be driven out, and the records kept there destroyed, to be remade at other points in time and space. The remnant of the Elder Ones will be destroyed and all their children with them, by their cousins and their thralls, and the world which was life-filled by Yima’s spilt blood will be made clean and barren once more.

And it will come to pass that in the waste will dance the myriad children of the Cold Ones, until these too pass away, and go out to other worlds. And in the emptiness of the waste there will be left only one being, who is neither Azathoth nor Nyarlathotep, and neither their children or their chosen. And its name is not given to be known even unto Innan, and for this cause it is known simply as The One, who is alone, and reigns alone, and will be alone from eternity to eternity.

This is the end and the way of the world. Foretelling is merely recalling according to the memories of those who have gone further down the river of time, and then returned. Thus, let it be remembered, for it is written even as it happened, as observed by Innan which was present and beheld it all.

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Things That I Like: Cosmogonical Fiction

Things That I Like: Cosmogonical Fiction

What’s that, you may ask? Let’s start out with a few examples. Spoilers will be everywhere, so be warned.

Unknown Armies is a game that divides itself into three levels: street, global, and cosmic. In cosmic-level games, the players are trying to live their lives so as to imitate particular Archetypes strongly enough to ascend to a higher state of existence and become one of the 333 members of the Invisible Clergy. When their ranks are filled this universe will come to an end and a new one will be born under their direction.

Nexus War and its replacement Nexus Clash are a pair of browser-based MMORPGs that are about a conflict taking place after the end of the universe. The player characters are people taken from various worlds and points in the history of the last universe, and placed in a battlefield made partly of eternal planes and partly of post-apocalyptic flotsam. Their actions strengthen and weaken the various gods (and fixing things can be as useful as killing your god’s enemies, if he’s the craftsgod). The strongest god out of the nine will be the one who will exert the greatest amount of influence in creating the next universe. This will affect everything from how many spatial and temporal dimensions exist to how death works (or doesn’t) to how integral violence is to the very fabric of reality in that universe.

Homestuck is a really, really long webcomic (658,000 words and counting) that is, basically, about these kids who play a game called Sburb that sends them into another world. In the process this destroys Earth, and their actions in this other world will contribute to the creation of a whole new universe.

A Dry, Quiet War is a bit off from the others in that there is a war at the end of time— it’s literally called “the Big War at the End of Time”— but it isn’t being fought to determine the nature of the next universe. Rather, in crazy stable time loop shenanigans, the war is being fought in order to determine the nature of this universe. As Colonel Bone explains, “In the future, we won. I won, my command won it. Really, really big. That’s why we’re here. That’s why we’re all here.”

What do these have in common?

There is a conflict being fought by persons or groups. They may be fighting each other, as in Unknown Armies and Nexus War, or against the environment or another group which has no chance of influencing the universe, as in Homestuck, where the Dersites can only prevent the creation of the new universe, not twist it to their own aims.

The conflict generally involves an amount of violence, but violence typically isn’t the only factor. 

• In Unknown Armies you have to act in a way that befits your Archetype, and acting against this can actually reduce your power.
• In Homestuck, catching frogs is one of most important tasks out there, and building houses is also a pretty big thing.
• As mentioned before, in the Nexus games something as simple as repairing or building a door can help out your side.

The participants generally ascend to greater power in the course of events, whether or not they are directly responsible for creating the new universe or merely facilitating it:

• Characters in Unknown Armies gain godlike powers.
• In Homestuck, Sburb’s players have the potential to ascend to the “god tiers” and get other abilities along the way,
• The champions of the Elder Powers in the Nexus games can become angels, demons, vampires, and more.
• Those who fought in the Big War at the End of Time are almost like eldritch horrors by the end. Some of this is merely technological, such as how Colonel Bones’ nerves have been replaced by wires, but then there’s stuff like how he kills somebody so that that the other guy is plain wiped from existence.

Finally, those involved may have to destroy this universe or a part of it in the process of creating the new one. Indeed, destruction is necessary in three of the above four, and in two of those the forces of creation are apparently convinced that they are an IKEA and all universes must go.

These stories are to be distinguished from games like Mage or Esoterrorists, or stories like Fritz Leiber’s Change War series because the nature of this reality is set in stone. Even if you’re fighting for this universe’s nature, as in A Dry, Quiet War, there’s really no hope of changing the outcome. You’re just fighting because you fought, and it’s impossible to change time no matter what, or there will be other reasons for you to fight, or breaking the time loop does bad things to you but to everybody else in the timeline-as-it-should-have-happened it’s as if nothing different went down (as in Homestuck but also as in The Men Who Murdered Mohammed).

What’s the point of writing all this out?

I think that these examples represent a legitimate pattern of story. Hence why I bothered to give them a name. But, and here’s a point, I had to give them a name. It’s a real pattern, but not one that’s been recognized yet. Probably because it is, I’ll freely admit, pretty minor.

But these can’t be the only stories of their kind. Are there any other examples that come to mind? Or common elements that I’ve missed?

(And does anyone think that it’s an interesting enough pattern to use for a story, or am I the only one?)

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Worldbuilding Wednesday: Alien Gods

Wherein I take an hour or two to expand a concept of mine and see how far I can take it. I have something like 50 pages of story ideas (just the ones I've sorted, moreover) and this will be an exercise in seeing how much potential they have. It's all basically stream of consciousness, thrown out as it occurs to me, with only some polishing at the end to make sure that everything is grammatically correct and I didn't leave any sentences incomplete.

If our beliefs produced gods, then do alien species have gods? This is a sort of Far Future Scion or American Gods kind of story, I suppose. It's about taking a not-uncommon premise from contemporary fantasy and melding it with science fiction.

So, let's do this.

Guest Post: The Cyclops Edda

Written by Shishi Nouti, taking inspiration from the random generator at the back of the Cyclopedia of Comparative Mythology. Shishi Nouti has been kind enough to release this piece of mythology into the Creative Commons.

Skiftjana, Sleep Mother, Demigoddess of Dreams

Likened to fire, which can warm or burn, she brings dreams good and bad, of love or of hate. (A secondary association stems from fire's importance in keeping warm at night). Also associated with mental illness, particularly of the bipolar or schizoid type, due to her association with the irreality of dreams and their fluctuating nature.

Poetry: Hali (Byself)

This poem was previously published in the December 2014 issue of Hello Horror.

Hali (Byself)

A shoreless, boundless sea
Kicked up by the cold storm
Swallowing the ivory tower.

A shoreless, boundless sea
Hiding hunting serpents and
Gaunt faces in the chaos
Kicked up by the cold storm,
An explosive transformation
Beckoning the end of ages,
Swallowing the ivory tower,
The tower of Babel, our folly,
To the sound of beating drums.

In a house of mirrors the yellow king
Harrows sixty-nine reflected tiers.

The Idea Emporium #2: Selected Fragments from the Necronomicon

Selected Translations

A selection of lines from Wormius’ Latin text, with translations by Dr. Shawn Daniels. Some notes also by the same. The observant reader will notice some discrepancies in these literal translations from some traditional renderings given by Warren Rice.

Antiqui illi erant; Antiqui illi sunt; Antiqui illi erunt.

“Those Ancients were; Those Ancients are; Those Ancients will be.”

Rendered by Warren Rice as “The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be.”

Letum fio quod mundos deleo

“I am become Death, that destroys worlds.”

It does not appear that the Necronomicon borrowed from the Gita, and it is quite impossible for the Gita to have borrowed from the Necronomicon. Rather, based on other evidence it appears that this and other lines have been drawn from a third text predating them both.

Nevertheless, the particulars of the Necronomicon’s version presents interesting differences.

The Idea Emporium #1: A Few Notes on the Necronomicon

As promised, with the closing of The Culture Column has come the opening of a new column. The Idea Emporium is a grab bag of ideas. This month and the next I’ll supply some goodies on the Necronomicon. Other months might include new cultures, alien species, peculiar philosophies, or anything beyond or in-between.

As always, these are free for grabs and totally in the public domain from this point on. Use as you please, how you please.

A Brief History of the Necronomicon

"...pretiosissimum donum ab dis, id quod est esse, sed est novissime malum." Garamond Edition

“[it is] the most precious gift by the gods, that which is to be, but it is the last of all evil things.” Warren Rice Translation.

Things That I Like: 4 Conflicts Between Order and Chaos

“In Michael Moorcock’s universe, a war is fought by two separate yet equally important groups: Law, which provides the fundamental capability of existence, and Chaos, which provides the ability for change and development. These are their stories.”

Awhile back I wrote a post with four moral dichotomies that were not so simple as “Good vs. Evil.” I mentioned that I would probably do an article specifically treating Order and Chaos and, what do you know, that day has come.

Fiction: Where the Minotaur (A Babylonian Medley Story)

Out of the books must you be judged, and out of the books have they been judging you. Have they judged you?

They have.

Out of books that are a pale, forged book of life. You remember the hearing of your crimes, even if the memory of them is sometimes faded in this place. You remember, and you remember knowing you were not a monster.

750 Words Fiction: After Olympus

"I saw Zeus dead on his throne at Olympus. His eyes had been eaten out, his belly was torn up."

The stranger was like a pile of rags. He spoke with an accent not from this country. In fact, his words were not like anything that the other men had heard before, a stream of strange and foreign syllables, but somehow they could understand the sounds regardless.

A hand shot out. "A coin, please. Any make or size. Gold or lead it does not matter."

One of the men gave him a pouch of coins. They disappeared beneath the shadow of his hood, where they saw the suggestion of movement and heard metal clinking and crushing together.

"I am the light. Was the light," the stranger muttered. "My arrows were purity, purifying, and my words are now a plague."

"They were not a plague, good stranger. It was by your words that the rat-men died. We don't claim to understand it, but when you spoke they died. What plague is that?"

Some of the men were old enough to remember the coming of the rats that were like men, many decades ago. They had come in a small number, sweeping the whole world before them, but their numbers grew rapidly. For every rat that died, it seemed as though five more came up to take his place.

They did not always conquer, and they fought against each other as much as any of true man, but where they held land it was turned barren. They tore up the trees to eat the green and burn the brown, and they ate up the brush, and all the beasts of the field, whether mouse, vulture, cattle, or lion.

"My poetry does not kill them. It... reclaims them. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with me, and... the Word was myself. And it would be a lie to say that this Word was a darker side of myself, of which I was ashamed. There are no sides to us, only the wrath of our fancy and whims. We think, we act, we do, we are, and the whole world suffers. For are we not Olympians? Restraint was a dirty word in those days."

"We are still grateful to you. Sit and eat with us tonight, and then tomorrow you can go your way or remain with us. But if you will do that then you must live as a man. The gods condescend to sup with men from time to time but do not remain therewith. So you will not live as a god, if you live among us."

"No," the stranger agreed. "I am the last of the gods, and in that I have died. There are no gods left in this blighted land. A demon, maybe. But only myself. I cannot blame my Word for having done as it was spoken."

"And what did you speak for them?"

"I was angered that I would be forgotten, for this is what I was told by one that was wise, and would know such things. Not the Oracle, but one like unto her, and she is nameless and without shape. And she said to me that I would be discarded, that this would be the fate of all the house of Olympus. And so I cursed in my anger."

"What curse did you levy out?"

"That the sun would be carried out before all men and beheld without end. That all men would see it, and weep, because of the blindness and the brightness and the scorching heat of endless summer days. All these things I said and more, or else I said only one word, which was 'Destruction. Each son is surely greater than the last, if we measure things by the strength of their wrath. Whatever crimes my father committed, and Cronus and Uranus before him, I have surely exceeded these."

The stranger sighed. He grew silent for a little while save for the clinking and chewing of coins, and the men that were about let him be.

"They are called Uert-Heket. This is the Word that they are. So I must issue a new Word against them, my deadly poetry, words that are arrows to them."

"And what is your name?"

"The name by which I was born, it is dead to me, for I am dead to it. But I am Smintheus now, Rat-Killer, and I shall not rest until I have repented in full and taken back the Word which I have spoken."

"Then it will be well with us. As a god you were fit to be overthrown, and so you cast yourself off the heights in your folly. But as a man you will find your way again."

"Even so," the stranger agreed.

Word count: 801 words
Time: 10 minutes (research), 39 minutes (writing)
Prompt: Rat warlord-rangers and sprites in medieval South Africa. The world is beseiged by rodent-related cataclysms, zombie animals and pollution. 

So some of this is off-screen, but it's still all stuff that exists, and this is in South Africa. Didn't know quite how to work the sprites into it, but they're definitely also there. Maybe they're even present here, just invisible to Apollo. 

Now that I think of it I like the idea of a brief slice-of-life kind of episode where someone is tending to cattle or something and has to deal with and experience a few of these things. Maybe Apollo is one of the servants now here. Or is passing by. 

Of a Feather: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

A review for Of a Feather, by Ken Goldman.

"This is a small town. Eventually everybody knows everybody, and things just overlaps, you know?"

Nutshell: The whole town has birds on the brain, though nobody realizes the extent of it. There are other, darker things at work at the town, though, and these sins are made all the more horrible for how simple and common they are. Of a Feather is about darkness and redemption, and the seemingly chance encounters that draw disparate persons together and drive them inexorably to either of these paths. The birds are just icing on the cake.

Idea: Once a Slavetrader, Always a Santa Claus

Cast your thoughts back to the last ice age, for it is then that our tale begins.

Fairieland, you see, is a very cold place, a veritable winter wasteland. Its inhabitants don’t deal very well with heat. It is for this reason that the Good People aren’t so common in modern times, but back in the bad old days they flitted in and out of their Grand Doors to our world (and to many other worlds as well, but for those we humans neither had nor have no concern).

Idea: The Once and Misremembered King

Heroes have a tendency to be foretold by prophecy in fantasy stories. It sometimes seems to be few and far between that a hero worth his salt won’t have at least a single prophecy foretelling his coming or his return. But those prophecies can sometimes be centuries old, and we all know how accurately things get passed down through the ages, and that’s without considering the problems which arise when you’re translating from one language to another.

Fiction: A Legend of Creation

This story at Fictionpress.

After the Gods descended from the spires of the stars and made the world and all things that existed thereon, and in the depths thereof, They waited for a time in the midst of the world and observed the work which they had saw fit to form. And it came to pass that They saw many that began to grope forward toward the light of knowledge, and in the fullness of time it was to these that the Gods taught the gift of writing.

Poetry: Schicksal der Götter [Christian/Norse mashup]

This poem at Fictionpress
at Archive of Our Own

"Fate of the Gods," or Ragnarok. A fusion of Norse and Christian apocalypses.

This is a ljóðaháttr poem, a form characterized by alliteration, lifts, and caesuras (here denoted by "|").

It draws heavily on the Völuspá for the course of events, more so than the Bible.

The Journeymen [D]

The Shifting Spirits

The Shifting Spirits are liars who are the sole survivors of a now-dead realm which was torn apart by outsiders— or they themselves are outsiders who have learned to coexist with Creation— or they were exiled from a prosperous series of timelines for their grave crimes— or they have achieved time travel and are working to ensure that the course of events which led to their existence will come to pass— or they are the servants of the Powers Major. Their forms are as fluid as water and revert to solidity with a thought, taking on any form which they would like.

Idea: These twelve keep the world alive (and then there were none)

There is precisely one reason why God has not descended from On High and made the world perfect and without sin: The tzadikim.

They are men and women whose existence is a testament to humanity's ability to rise from even the greatest depths of sin and come to a full redemption. They are the proof in the pudding that there's hope for us yet, that the project shouldn't be deemed a failure and scrapped. Their continued existence prevents the end of the world as we know it, and you have never known their names. They are not Gandhi, they are not Jesus. They lead lives of little renown as they act as teachers to those who need their help, and the world makes sure that the world forgets them as they pass away.

Idea: The Lizard People are not what you think [B]

Continued from Wednesday.

The reptoids of today are a miserable rabble compared to their illustrious forbears. They are scrambling. Their science has decayed over generations of imperfect transmission and many are looking for older records, hoping that we are advanced enough to finally reverse-engineer some of the more crucial principles and grant them either a way home or a weapon to secure their power here forever. We are interfertile, our two species, and the modern race of annunaki is more human than reptoid. The blood is thin, they think in ways and feel emotions foreign to their ancestors, and some are capable of only partial transformations. More and more are freaks, either trapped in a hybrid mishmash form or seemingly entirely without a trace of their starry heritage.

For the annunaki, the apocalypse came thousands of years ago.

The annunaki whisper to their children that they would have been worshiped as gods in the old order but they are impotent scions at best. The truth is that they would have no power, would be peons and footmen, so far have they degraded. And yet still they try to accomplish the dream of their ancestors, a second world order, now as the rising sun but modeled after the first of them all (and who knows what would happen if the old empire, still extant, came in contact with this world again).

And where would George fall into this? As his people have fallen, so has he. His alcoholism was real. His grief over his sister's death was real. Left to his own devices he would hold an anonymous life in a small town on no map. But his life was charted out for him no matter how he tried to drink himself away from it. Perhaps it was cowardly to go along in the end rather than reject it, but he couldn't follow his sister's path. Perhaps at least he could try to salvage something along the way.

And now he sits amid ruins, putting on a face for the world and his peers but secretly glad in a way that he failed to do all that they expected of him. He wonders how many of his peers are in his same position, dissatisfied but too afraid to do anything but follow orders- they've learned, and even the powerful ones know that they can't tear away from the group without reprisal. But they managed to ensure that unity too late in the game and a few of them decide to risk it anyway and sometimes even get away with it.

Meanwhile the bottle still calls to George, and he himself calls out at night to a God that he fervently wishes is real but knows could easily be just the persona of one of his own ancestors. It isn't a pretty life, but he never lied and told himself that he was strong enough to make it anything else.

Perhaps his grandchildren will live long enough to see the blood run out at last, and in that generation his bones will find rest as the plots of the annunaki finally crumble to a halt.