AN: Warning--this is a bit demented, but when I thought of the fabulous symmetry between Rolsin burning the book because she thinks it is false and the preist getting burned because he thinks it's true was just too much to pass up. And really it's not as bad as it could be. I looked to the trial and execution of Joan of Arc, and they actually burned her body twice to make sure there was nothing left but *ashes.* Let me know if this tips the story from the T over into the M category. And, yes, I know, there is no dialogue and it's just kinda boring desciption, but I promise dialogue and action and stuff by next chapter. Really, I was torn between putting this into chapter one and leaving it on its own, but it's just easier this way. Just think of them as installments rather than chapters.
The Book of Pythia
Chapter 2: The Sacrifice
The echoes of a man's screams hung fresh in the air. The fire grew hotter, the flames higher. A column of thick, black smoke twisted sideways, caught in the wind, snaking skyward over the undulating crowd. The high priests turned their backs to the spectacle, their duty performed.
* * * * *
As the flames had climbed his robes and licked his face, he had screamed in agony. His eyes stinging with the smoke billowing from beneath him, he had barely been able to see the faces of the brethren, his brothers who had turned against him, against the gods themselves.
Once the processional had come to the base of the pyre, the herald had opened the scroll and read the charges against him and the sentence that the High Council had determined be visited upon the lowly priest, "For the crimes of heresy and blasphemy against the Lords of Kobol, it is the determination of the High Council that this man should be condemned to death for fear that otherwise he might corrupt public morality, threaten holy doctrine, and divide the people among themselves and the gods. We believe that it would be an intolerable offense to the gods should this man be left alive to spread his lies and heresies among the people of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol."
He had been led from the courtroom directly to the public square where his sentence would be read and carried out. Priests who had dedicated themselves to Hephaestus had already been engaged in building the pyre, towering to the heavens with a great stake set at the middle of a huge pile of faggots.
The trial had been a sham. The council of the high priests had called him up on charges of heresy and blasphemy, labeled him a schismatic, an apostate. It was one thing to prefer one god, they had said, but quite another to insist that there exists only one. But he had done no such thing. He believed in the Lords of Kobol, Zeus and Hera, Apollo, Athena, Aphrodite, Ares, all of them. His only crime was trying to preserve the true history of the Cycle of Time, the bedrock of their faith. He had tried to explain this, but was shouted down again and again, told that he had defied the will of the gods.
If not for his determination to save the original record of the death and rebirth of mankind, the history of the exodus, the great caravan—past and future—would never be known. As things stood, the Pythian Text had been saved, but only he knew where it was. Would anyone find it? Would it find its way into the right hands in time?
* * * * *
At last, mercifully, the thick smoke filled his lungs completely, leaving his unsaid prayers dying on his lips.