Grijs
Enzayne
MarshalSolgriev
Lord Zee
Frettzo
DracoLunaris
Cao the Exiled
Vec
“I am hunger-starving,” a voice said.
“Yes-yes. Wait-Patience, almost through maze-labyrinth,” another said.
An aroiox looked to another before it called out, “Kavka, how much wait-longer?” Many had grown thin, the young had already succumbed to starvation as the two brothers attempted to maintain some form of rational order over the people. But the dissent was growing as it grew clearer with each day that the gods had abandoned them, leaving them to die when they said it was their destiny to leave the accursed maze. Perhaps, it was because they had not done what the gods wanted, maybe.
“Know-not,” Kavka said, looking forward, before turning to his brother, “Brother-kin?”
Yreu only shook his head.
“We lack-desire food-meat! Young-kin starve, eggs spoil!” the one who had asked Kavka, stepping towards the brothers with a clear anger in her voice. Kavka only turned in response, looking down upon the one who dared approach. Soon they’re chests touched as the two pushed their weights against each other, the female and the male seemed almost equal in their weight. “You leader-tyrant! Lead us to death-stave!,” she growled.
“Maze-thing by creator-gods design! They will deliver-give food!” Kavka snapped as he pushed the female to the ground, her arms scraping against the stone floor of the maze. He felt the hand of Yreu on his shoulder, clearly attempting to reign Kavka in.
“Brother-kin, we must-need to keep move-stepping. The god-creators are test-watching us,” Yreu said calmly, but his brother already pulled away and stepped towards the female.
“God-creators, wish-desire us to live-thrive. No food-meat,” Kavka said looking upon the angered female who scrambled to her feet, attempting to push back against the male who only put her back onto the ground.
“Food-meat…” Kavka said as he watched blood drip from a cut on the female’s forearm.
“Kavka, do not!” Yreu squawked, the talons of his hands digging into the brothers shoulder. Then, he looked up. “Brother-kin, look!”
Kavka looked up, many of the aroiox following to see a sight that would only mean bad omens for the rest of eternity. The eyes of the maze, they closed. The aroiox waited to see if they would reopen, hoping that their creators had not abandoned them. But the eyes did not reopen, and to the children of Eurysthenes and Vakk, it meant that they had lost their favor.
Kavka looked down at the now terrified female, her blood pooling on the stone floor.
Hunger.
Hunger.
FEAST-KILL
60 years later
The Maze.
Vakk remembered this place well, though the pillars of spikes that had erupted from the walls were certainly recent addition that it could do without. It made travel somewhat troublesome at times, as it either had to go through small spaces or taking the time to break through the great pillars of the maze. In addition to the spikes, it made the twisting labyrinth even more of a special hell to get through as the spikes would form new walls or even form new tunnels to be climbed through.
Even with a god’s speed, this was a tedious endeavour, but Vakk was determined to find those that Eurysthenes had abandoned to their fate while That One watched idly as the enigma took a god’s memory. Vakk took one step after another, focusing on its task, not allowing its mind to cloud its judgement on what needed to be done. However, the maze always had a way of playing with one’s mind, even without Eurysthenes being there to play tricks or suddenly change the way. It was almost as if the maze itself was relaying the abandonment to Vakk in such a way to merely be insidious, but it knew the maze was not doing it, but it was Vakk’s own mind.
”We abandoned them, I could have left to save the Aroiox,” Vakk said to itself, tearing open its mouth as it spoke. It crossed its arms behind his back, walking along a narrow pathway that the pillars had left untouched, keeping all its senses focused on anything that may lead it to the children it had left.
”We abandoned them, but I could have stepped in and brought sense to Eurysthenes,” Vakk spoke, its voice was emotionless as it continued his way through the maze. A left turn then a right turn. It had not been there long, but it could already feel that the repetition of the maze was getting to it as everything seemed the same, almost indistinguishable except for the pillars being jutted out in different locations. This place was lifeless and bleak without Eurysthenes’ additions.
Almost too bleak for Vakk’s tastes.
Vakk stopped as it felt his foot kick something away, the rattling leading to a cacophony of a graveyard, and the sight that befell it would be one that it would never be able to rid of itself. For the first time in That One’s existence as a god, it would feel remorse and pain for its actions as it fell to its knees. The sight that befell him was one of a thousand bones, blood stained the walls and rotted, shrivelled meat clung to the teeth of those who had given into hunger.
”No…” it said, sadness filling every whole that had been created where it had torn out its anger.
”I-I could not stop this” it said, remorse following the sadness.
”Eurysthenes did this,” it said, blame wanting to snuff out what truth existed in the situation, before its hands clasped the side of its head. Vakk sobbed, ”...Eurysthenes fault.”
There was a silence as Vakk did needless breaths between sobs, knowing the feeling of abandonment that Li’Kalla had felt, knowing the pain of having something taken from it like mortal who had lost a loved one. Now it knew, it knew what true pain was.
Death felt like nothing compared to this pain.
”I let this happen,” Vakk said, truth breaking the blame it wanted to keep just convince itself that there were no alternative fates. But the truth was what hurt the most, knowing that it should have stepped in where Eurysthenes had failed. That it should have stepped in to be the savior of these lost and misguided souls. That it should have voiced its opinions to Eurysthenes rather than being silent.
But those times were long passed.
Vakk went and picked up a skeleton, wanting to cradle a being he regarded as a child, only for the skeleton to fall to pieces. Vakk hunched over and let out wails and sobs so loud and so painful that even the light of the Heliopolis would fade and be washed out. There was a way for it to have saved his children and it had failed them and it had failed Eurysthenes, the only one who had taken the time to truly try to change Vakk for the better. It had failed in every regard and it was those failings that inflicted an additional pain to the saddened god.
”No…” it rejected, casting away the truth. It would not be a failure and it would let all of Galbar know that its creation had thrived, even in death.
”My children will live the life they deserved! They will live a life that was robbed of them by my failings” the voices cried it in pain and anguish as Vakk jammed a fist into the ground as a few of its tendrils slithered through the air to grasp some bones. There, the god of speech would craft, there it would perfect an artifact capable of bringing back its children and erase one of his many failures. The children shall hear the music of life once more as it took the pieces of a stone and molded metal through it.
From a leg bone, Vakk would craft a hilt, forcing it into a place alongside a skull before it would attach a small chain made from ligaments not yet decayed, forced into a metallic structure. It would force the skull into a bell, the only indication of it being otherwise being the hollow eye sockets and the bone that made the hilt.
Vakk raised the bell high, allowing for the light of day to gaze upon the unholy creation that would go against the very balance of nature itself.
”I know what it is like to lose,” It said, casting away its rationality to have the bell toll once.
Then the bells would toll twice. Then thrice. So on and so forth.
Soon, a sickly green pulse erupted from the bell, darkening the sky as a gas rained from above, touching the bones and remains that belonged to the once beloved people. The bones began to shift, slowly moving to reconnect with parts that they had long disconnected from, slowly becoming what they once were before the failure of the creator.
”You are Vakk’s chosen! I did not want this, I wanted you all to thrive! I wanted to see you all live lives full and happy! Now, I give you all a chance again! Come my children, live again!”
The bones rose, souls collecting within them as eyes of the same sickly green began to form in those hollow sockets, the forms of long dead birds looking to their creator and savior, the one had first gave them life and the one that brought back life where there was death. However, as Vakk looked down upon them, it saw not life created from death, it saw a living death, beings that had been born of unnatural causes. However, That One had done what it had promised, to bring them back from death.
They looked onto their creator, unable to express emotion and unable to feel warmth or cold. The undead merely were.
“My children! I am sorry for having abandoned you for so long! But now, I have given you the chance to live again! You will all know the touch of life, the touch of my life!” Vakk said, its tendrils moving to take the bell from its hand.
Then there was silence. The dead did not move, they did not speak but they did stare blankly at their god.
“We cannot know life for we do not live,” a voice from the crowd said, “We are but fragments, Lord Vakk.”
Vakk grew confused as the skeletons spoke in complete words, not as the broken words and conjunctions that the aroiox had typically used. These souls, they were not the same aroiox nor were they proper souls created from the Pyres of Katharsos. No, these souls were otherworldly, soul ash bound by magic in a dead form that did not bleed or age, a form that could only rot until nothing was left.
”N-nonsense, my child! You live again, but it is my life that I bestow upon thee! You live in forms that cannot die again, in forms incapable of hunger and pain! Come my children, rejoice!”
There was silence. No joy to be found in the husks of children, but after a moment, there was but merely a polite collection of clapping as their creator watched over them. Nothing they did was natural, their movement was shambles, their speech was but mere echoes, their life but a farce.
But Vakk was blind to the truth, blind to the fact that the beings he brought back from death were but mere husks. He would lead them, and he would settle them on Galbar.
His children would thrive.
