HORIZONS
Requiem
Nearly one thousand years ago, in the year 53 CE, a small village near the Kushan port of Barbarikon flourished on the edge of the sea. The able-bodied men of the village manned the fishing boats while the woman and children worked diligently in their homes and at the small temple palace. Beneath their head of sovereign, the First Prince of Klalchayan, life in the Small Village was secure and peaceful. To the east, the First Prince ravaged territories and felled kingdoms, gaining power and wealth for his Empire. But this meant very little to the people of the Small Village, who were concerned mostly with the weather, the trade winds, and the fish.
A young boy sat at the temple steps, staring down at the ritualistic slippers that covered his feet. His most important feature, his skull, was distorted in the shape of an hourglass, and this casted a strange shadow beside him onto the carefully swept stone stairway. Swathed in Chinese silks sent to him by his Uncle, the Young Boy tried not to look like he was going to cry.
He had been bidden by his father to attend a meeting between the leader of the Small Village and an important merchant from Barbarikon, but he had been thrust out of the banquet hall of the temple when he had offered his own opinion on the subject. His father had been enraged by his strange suggestions and had promptly slapped him for his ignorance, sending him out into the main worship room to await further punishment. Humiliated and upset, the Young Boy rushed out through the front doors and slumped down onto the steps outside, hating himself for being different.
Did he mention that his father was the leader of their village?
The Young Boy buried his face in his hands and sighed, accepting that his life would never get better. He would continue to be the laughing stock of his village, and would disgrace his ancestors for the rest of his life.
He was the only legitimate heir to his father's position; all of his other brothers and sisters had been born from concubines, and were forbidden to take his place unless the Young Boy was killed. His mother was deathly ill with an incurable sickness and was not able to bear children for her husband any longer, which displeased the Small Village's leader to no end. He prayed to Ahura Mazda every eve for the death of his wife to come swiftly, if only so that he could remarry and sire a true heir to his village, but the benevolent god overlooked his worship, and spared her graciously come every morning.
The Young Boy loved his mother very dearly, but his father saw his compassion as a weakness. In his father's eyes, he was nothing but a nuisance to his leadership, and a disgrace to his lineage.
Unable to stop himself, the Young Boy buried his face in his hands and cried.
He would have stayed there until the end of the frasho dereti had it not been for the sudden blanket of darkness over the sky, and the screaming that was coming from the ports of his little village. He looked up from his damp palms in horror as a torrent of water shot up into the humid air, raining down on the Small Village with the force of a monsoon. The water forced the roofs of their homes to crumble, and the flood took the villagers' feet from under them, sweeping them into the sea.
His body started to quake violently, but whether it was from the fear or not, he couldn't be sure. He gripped his head as a horrible headache suddenly overtook his senses, nearly sucking every ounce of breath from his lungs. He gasped as he collapsed to his knees in agony, his eyes watering and his body screaming against the invisible bonds that seemed to have captured him.
'assshhikhqoyisssshir...'
He shivered violently and stared upwards towards the sky. Something terrible had blocked out the sun; it was not a cloud, nor an eclipse, but a demon sent by Angra Mainyu himself. Its head spewed gas over the Small Village, and the Young Boy watched as his townspeople held their throats as they suffocated, sinking to the ground.
Blindly, the Young Boy stumbled to his feet and began to run through town, tripping over falling bodies still grappling for air. He ran towards his home, his mother, hoping on a whim that Ahura Mazda had spared her once again.
He threw the door open, and tried not to look as their woman slave writhed on the ground, liquid oozing down from her painted lips. He leapt over her and burst into his parent's chambers, praying to every god in Kushan he could think of. He skidded to a stop as he spotted her on her woollen mattress, prone and bent at an odd angle. Her eyes were sunken into her distorted skull and her skin was as shrivelled as a fruit left too long in the summer sun. The Young Boy shrieked as the mummified form of his mother buckled inwards, her bones turning to dust inside her body as the venom ravaged her organs from within. He collapsed onto his knees and wept aloud in terror and sorrow as he cradled her withered hand in his, quivering as his splitting headache ran clear through his veins yet again.
'Ruunnnnnn…'
The Young Boy swallowed and allowed one more cry of grief to pass his lips before he leapt through the windowpane and landed in the gardens of their backyard, hitting the ground running. He fled towards the temple only for him to see his father wriggling like a fish out of water on the temple steps, inadvertently rolling down the stone way in his final dying dance.
He landed at the bottom, the sickening crack of his broken neck shattering the throbbing in the Young Boy's head for but a moment, stopping time. His father's limbs crumpled to the ground like a dead weight, no longer moving, no longer writhing. His eyes were passive and lifeless, his hateful expression finally tranquil after years of glaring at his useless son, ridiculing him, despising him.
He was finally dead.
The Young Boy continued to stare for a moment, so overwhelmed with emotions that he couldn't drum up the compassion to grieve.
Time returned with a vengeance, and the Young Boy took off running again at the urging of the demon, fleeing to the outer boundaries of the Small Village towards the Indus River. For hours he flew, tearing through the fertile fields and sandy ridges with no location in mind. All he knew was that he had to continue running, to get away from the demon, to get away from his home.
There was no more Small Village.
Everything he ever knew was gone.
He tripped over a ridge hidden by grass and fell forwards, weeping with abandon into the undergrowth. The demon had destroyed his home, his family, his mother. He hadn't been able to stop it. He hadn't been able to save her. He sobbed for her, his voice carrying on the wind a song of sadness, of compassion, of grief. Her funeral hymn was the sound of the locusts buzzing, the cicadas warbling, the vultures crying.
He hadn't even had the chance to say goodbye.
Twenty one winters passed before the Young Boy returned to the sea. He stood upon the golden sands by the ruins of the Small Village and closed his tired eyes, knowing that the demon would be there when he opened them.
"You have taken my family, my childhood, my home. I am the last of my kind. You may take me."
He opened his eyes and forced himself not to quiver at the sight of Him. He had spent twenty one years of his life running in fear like a child in a man's body, too afraid to take action, too afraid to fight back.
The snake's head, now resting against the coastal sands, was as large as the worshiping temples in Scythia, and nearly twice as wide. He did not dare to look the monster in his eyes, for fear of becoming hypnotized by his evilness. The Young Boy dipped his head as the waves of the ocean lapped against the snake's massive jowls, signalling his guileless defeat.
"You may take me."
The snake grinned at the broken human, his tears streaming down his dirty, wrinkled face. The chase had been a magnificent one; he had learnt that humans, if anything, were very intriguing.
At last, the demon opened his colossal jaws.
'Gladly…'
If you're confused, check out the last few paragraphs of Verðandi and the End of All Things: Chapter VII for a little refresher.
I wrote Requiem for two reasons:
1) I wanted to introduce to you the dark themes that will take a truly dominant role of this final arc. Take a moment to look up at the rating - this fic is rated T for mortality. I assure you that Horizons is by no means a tragedy fic (I'm far too much of a hopeless romantic for that), but there will be dark moments.
2) I wanted to show you guys my chops at original fiction! I'm a huge ancient history buff and even though the Small Village is fictional, the Kushan Empire was very, very real. All of the cultural references I made were heavily researched because I'm, if anything, a very thorough writer. If you ever see an ancient historical fiction novel one day under the pseudonym Brontë, it's probably me!
Please let me know how you liked the chapter, and I'd love to hear your theories on how it relates to the big picture. This is one of the first original fiction pieces I've ever posted on the internet in general before so let me know if it was any good!
Brontë