ain beat down on the thatch roof of a little cottage outside of Modrian.
The sun fought the clouds in a battle for the sky, but the gray blanket pushed back the light, leaving the day dark. Sprinkles of rain littered the bare soil of the tiny garden at the side of the ragged cottage. The vegetables that grew there were drenched.
Gavix looked out of a tiny window just to the right of the crooked door of his home since childhood. The rain wasn’t going to get any better tonight.
A woman and child sat at a clumsily built table in the center of the one-room home. In front of them, plates with tiny portions of food awaited their eager consumption. The child, no more than eight years old, had dark circles under his eyes. He was gaunt, like a skeleton wearing a tissue-thin costume of unhealthy human skin. He licked his lips, staring at the steaming food.
Gavix moved away from the window and sat at the table with his wife and son. He bowed his head and said a prayer to Guiharia.
“Oh blessed mother of creation, watch over us as we consume the fruits of your imagination. Be with us as we eat life and drink health through your holy provisions. Blessed are we in the eyes of Guiharia.”
At these last words, Grist, the child, scooped a huge spoonful of vegetables into his mouth and chewed like mad. His mother, who had sacrificed meals for her son for years, watched him tuck away the scraps of not-so-fresh greens. Her name was Inanna, and she loved her son more than she hated the burning in her belly.
Gavix considered himself a lucky man to have a loving family. He did what he could for them, but the pitiful payment he received for his services to the church were stretched thin, and food was scarce. Guiharia provided what she could, thought Gavix. She will bring us through.
Throughout their silent supper, Gavix was brought back to thoughts of the church and his years of service. He was pious, and nothing could hold back his love for his creator, not even the lack of food in his stomach. He excused himself from his family and retrieved his battered cloak from a chest by the single bed on the west wall of the cottage. At the door of his home he looked back at the mother of his child.
“I’ll return before the dark has time to touch your face. I must speak to my Mother,” he muttered, eyes downcast. Gavix turned, and left through the slanted doorway. She didn’t say a word in return.
Gavix walked through the city gates.
He was always awed by their sheer size. How could mankind create something so beautiful? How could we create this, then kill each other in the streets? It boggled his mind.
Walking down East Goddess Street, Gavix observed the stray dogs fighting in the mud. They were growling and barking, biting each other with crumbling, rotting teeth. Something was unnerving about the way they fought, however. They weren’t just dogs in the street, struggling for supremacy in the natural battle for alpha male. They were hungry for meat. Gavix could see it in the way they chewed each others flesh.
As he passed the bank, he was thrown back by a burly city guard in light, leather armor.
“Get out of the way, peasant,” he grumbled as he dragged a struggling man in black away from another, more dangerous looking fellow. The dangerous one was bleeding from a fresh wound in his back.
“Geroff me you gruntish beast,” cried the skinny man in the city guard’s arms. “I’ll kill the both of you!”
Gavix then noticed the bloody dagger still in the hands of the city guard’s prisoner. He was barely able to step out of the way before the dagger flew through the air, landing snugly in the throat of the already wounded man.
Gavix, no stranger to violence, kicked the man in black. Another dagger fell out of his robes, landing in the dirt next to the city guard’s boot-clad foot.
The muscular guard kicked the blade away, then turned to Gavix with a look that meant business. He held the rogue in one arm and pushed Gavix away with the other. “This is none of yer business! Move along!”
The city guard put a hand on the hilt of his sword, wrestling against the struggling man in black.
Gavix obliged.
Clerics and healers wandered in and out of the great silver archway that led into the temple of Guiharia. A great golden platform stood in the center of the temple, like a permanent reminder of the sunlight hidden behind the clouds outside. Gavix climbed the steps that led upward to the center of the room, relishing the feeling of warmth and safety these walls always gave him. At the top of the stairs, he knelt. Gavix began to pray.
‘Oh Mother, I look outside and I see the skies are becoming darker. Not with clouds or rain, but with death, Mother. I fear for the safety of my family, and most of all the safety of this world. What are we becoming? I saw a man today kill another man… I know not the reason, but the blood reminded me of my service to you, Mother. I am not questioning my service, I am your son, but I question the motives of mortals. Why do we kill? I just… I just wish I knew that the future was a safe place for my bloodline to grow. I wish I knew… I wish I knew…
Kneeling before his Goddess, Gavix wept. He remembered the corpses hacked by his own sword, the blood on his tunic, the rage in his own voice as he screamed the battle hymns of Guiharia. And in his memories, he heard a voice. It was singing. Singing his name…
‘I live in your tears, Gavix,’ the voice draped over him like silk, smooth as the petals of a rose. ‘I am listening.’
Gavix looked downward, wide-eyed. He was a believer, but he had never thought that one day the Goddess would speak to him.
“I am not worthy of your voice, Mother,” Gavix whispered.
‘You are worthy. You are worthy of every gift I have to give, just the same as everyone else in this world.’
“But they are NOT worthy, Mother. They kill and steal… I have killed, and I have stolen life. I am no more worthy than they.”
‘You have done as I have asked, and for this I am grateful.’
“No, Mother, it is I should be grateful for serving you.”
‘Then we are grateful for each other, and I will be grateful for what you must do for me now, my son.’
Gavix raised his head and nodded.
“What is it you would ask of me, Mother,” Gavix asked.
‘I would have your wish fulfilled.’
Gavix stared at the golden floor of the raised dais upon which he knelt.
‘I would have you know the future.’
A great rumbling filled the temple, sending the followers of Guiharia throughout the room to their knees. Chunks of stone fell from the tall ceilings, shattering on the floor below or shattering the bones of the unfortunate underneath. Gavix looked up, and what he saw forced him into mumbling, erratic prayer.
It was a tear. A rip in… existence? Gavix couldn’t explain it to himself. It glowed and hummed like nothing he had ever experienced, not even the greatest magic of the church elders compared to this. Gavix stood, shaking legs threatening not to hold him against the weight of his body and the gravity of the situation he found himself in. That same singing voice came into his head… the voice of the Mother Guiharia.
‘Step foreword into your fate.’
Gavix took a half-step foreword before stopping himself.
“But… but Mother, my family,” he cried.
‘They won’t even know you were gone… if all goes well.’
Gavix paused.
“Will you take care of them,” he asked.
‘Yes, I will take them into my protection and extend to them the same security I have always gifted you, Gavix. They will be safe.’
Gavix relaxed. He looked at his hands.
“Then I’ll go. I’m going to see the future?”
‘Yes’
“Thank you Mother.”
He took a step… and disappeared.
The air smelled like burning things.
Thick and unbreathable, it swirled around speeding carriages of metal and shining plates that looked like giant insects. People in drab and unusual clothing walked along a strange raised stone pathway that seemed to run parallel to the beetle-carriages and wherever they were going. These men and women with blank expressions carried no weapons, but rather held strange square bags at their sides. Sounds of shrill horns, odd voices, the clank of metal, and from somewhere nearby came the scream of a woman. Gavix opened himself to it all, watching the people, smelling the smells, listening to the sheer volume of wherever he was, and making absolutely no sense of any of it. He was overwhelmed, he was scared, he was alone.
Gavix stumbled along the dirty walkway until he came to a woman in a long, hooded robe. He grasped at her legs from his knees.
“Please tell me where I am,” Gavix begged. “I don’t know where I am!”
The woman shrugged him off and stuffed a crumpled piece of paper into his hands. Gavix stared at this for a moment, wondering why this woman had given him a worthless wad of paper. He stood in front of another woman, this one in darker clothing and a mask of some kind hanging from her neck.
“I beg you, tell me where I am,” he pleaded.
She stopped, cocked her head to the side, then kicked him in the genitals.
Gavix dropped to the ground, screaming from the unbearable pain that ran from his groin to every edge of his body. He rolled to the side, curling up into a ball. He lay there for ten full minutes, waiting for either the pain or the evil woman in black to go away. He was blessed, at least, with the absence of the woman. His pain, however, lingered for a while longer.
Gavix got up from the stinking ground and shuffled to the front of a building that looked to him like a storefront. Bright, colored lights shone on various pieces of jewelry under glass. One, in particular, looked peculiarly familiar to him. He decided to go in.
A young, bearded man sat on a stool behind a counter made of glass. Jewelry of all kinds glistened under the glass. The young man glanced up from a magazine he was reading and looked strangely at the dirty wanderer in his store. He said something Gavix didn’t understand and pointed at the door. Gavix was paying no attention to the young man’s finger, however, but was more focused on his face. He was almost positive he had seen it somewhere. He recognized the beard and the eyes of the young man, and he almost certainly noticed his small stature.
“I know you from somewhere,” Gavix said.
The man said something else in his odd gibberish that Gavix couldn’t understood completely. The young man had a look on his face that Gavix knew to mean “I’m going to fetch the guards,” and he was right enough. The young man had a telephone in his hand and was dialing the local police. Gavix backed toward the door slowly, with his hands out in front of him, showing the store owner that he had no weapons. That was when he saw the picture on the wall and froze.
“I’ll take it,” Gavix said, smiling at the jeweler. He had just purchased a ring for his wedding. It was a simple, silver ring with a tiny engraved name on it. Galiahai, it said. It was his wife’s name.
The bearded old fellow behind the glass countertop smiled at him and winked.
“She’s going to faint a the sight of this here ring, she will. ‘Tis my specialty,” The old man said. He dropped from the stool he was sitting on and waddled into the back room. He was a dwarfish man, no taller then a child, and had a long beard that went all the way to the floor if it wasn’t taken care of. Hovering in the room by the door was a demon of great strength. Gavix could see right through it, but he knew that it could make it’s teeth and claws quite solid if it wanted to rip out his throat for stealing anything in this store. The dwarfish man returned with a silk-lined box for him to place the ring he would be giving his wife.
“My blessings to you both,” said the Dwarf. “Best of luck.”
“My thanks, Rock,” Gavix replied, then left the store. He was eerily aware that the demon was watching him as he left.
“Rock Hard,” Gavix said. “You have his picture!”
The young man looked up at the mention of that name. He said something else in his exotic language and pointed to the picture on the wall.
“Yes, Rock Hard,” Gavix said. “I knew him. He sold me this.”
Gavix lifted his hand with the simple silver ring on it and the young store owner gasped. He rushed from behind the counter and came up to Gavix to look at his ring. He pointed at himself and mumbled one word.
“Rocky,” he said in a broken voice.
Gavix nodded and repeated the name. Now he knew where he recognized this man from. He must be a far removed relative of the same jeweler that sold him his ring. Gavix, stunned by this coincidence, was not too stunned to notice the sirens and flashing lights coming from the outside of the store.
Three men… well, men isn’t exactly what they looked like. They were metal men… they had machines growing out of their skin. Gavix stared at them in disbelief, waiting for one of them to try to eat him. When one of them made a move to grab him, Gavix punched him in the throat and tried to run. Bad idea. His hand was bleeding and he was cornered. Another “man” captured him and locked him in a grip so tight he thought he would burst. The three of them dragged him off while Rocky the jeweler waddled after, looking distressed. When they locked him in one of those shiny carriages, Rocky knocked on the window and said something else in that gods-forsaken language of his. He looked in the window of the car and waved. The three “men” got in the car and they rode away from the quiet storefront of Rock Hard Jewel Designers.
It was Gavix’s third night in the cold cell of the Electro Centralis city jail. He was frustrated beyond anything he had ever felt. He was alone. His family was gone… He couldn’t understand a bloody thing these people said, so he couldn’t tell if he was here because they had nowhere else for him or if he was going to be executed the very next day. His meals consisted of several kinds of sludge he didn’t recognize and random foods wrapped in something that reminded him of a mix of cloth and metal. It crinkled when he touched it and tore easily when he ripped it, so he knew it was neither of these things. He had taken to collecting them for study.
The mystery of the wrappings was keeping him fairly occupied when someone dropped by to visit.
A woman in a business suit and wire-rimmed spectacles was standing outside of his barred cell when he looked up from the crinkling mess he had acquired from his many wrapped hot-dogs and candy bars. She wore glasses and radiated power greater than any of his wildest dreams. He said a silent prayer to Guiharia, but found that the familiar comfort of her presence had abandoned him. This was true two days ago when he prayed for a quick escape, and also yesterday when he prayed for a sign to maintain his faith. She had flung him into this world of smoke and noise and then left him there to rot in captivity. She wasn’t on his good side.
“Your prayers won’t work here,” she said.
For a moment Gavix thought he didn’t understand her, but her words sunk in slowly, finally dawning on him. He could understand her!
“Get me out of here,” he bellowed through the bars. “Get me out of here please! I don’t know what’s going on! Help! Help me, gods help me!”
Gavix reached an arm through the bars and grabbed the woman’s suit-jacket. She stepped foreword.
“I’m going to get you out of here, but you have to promise to come with me and tell me everything you’ve been through. We’ve noticed you since you walked through the rift. It sent a shockwave of energy through us all.”
She looked into his eyes, reading him.
“Do you promise,” she asked.
Gavix didn’t know exactly what she meant by ‘rift’, ‘energy’, or what he supposed to tell her, but he nodded his head anyway. He wanted out.
“Then I’ll be right back,” she said, and walked away.
It seemed like she was gone for hours, but when she returned she brought a man in the uniform of the jail. He took a card out of his pocket a rubbed it against a box next to his cell. The bars clicked and slid away. He was free.
The woman led him out of the jail and to another one of those insectoid-looking carriages that he would later know as automobiles. Gavix climbed into the passenger seat willingly enough, but remembered that the last time he was in one of these things it was to take him somewhere against his will. After the woman got in and started the car, she turned to him.
“How did you do it,” she asked, a spark of energy in her eyes betraying her enthusiasm.
“Do what,” Gavix asked in response.
“Get through to us. How did you travel in time? How did you open a rift? How did you survive the Astral Plane?”
Gavix thought about this and decided that she meant his gift from his Mother Guiharia.
“I prayed.”
The woman raised her eyebrow.
“You prayed,” she asked.
“Yes. Mother Guiharia has blessed me with the curse of the future.”
The woman looked down. She held out her hand to him.
“My name is Niha. What’s yours?”
“Gavix. Gavix Eris-Prin.”
“Pleased to meet you Gavix. I want to take you to a place where people like me can better understand how you got here. We just want to ask you questions. You’d be welcome to stay for as long as you want. I’m sure you have nowhere else to stay. Besides… its safer and cheaper than the hotel.”
She grinned.
“I’ll go with you,” he replied. “But you have to make me a promise.”
“What’s that?”
Gavix looked down at his hands. A tear fell from his eyes, landing on a cracked knuckle. It traced its way down to his fingertip, then fell to the floor of the car.
“You have to help me get back to my family.”
Electricity played in his hands.
Gavix straightened his suit coat and tie, then went back to the manipulation of energy he was working on. He placed his palms together, then slowly pulled them apart, spreading the energy he was holding like spiderwebs. It crackled along his skin like dancing insects, leaping between his fingers. He stared at it coldly, making silent calculations in his head.
It had been ten years since his abandonment in this horrid future. Guiharia was dead to him, and his faith was buried with her.
When the woman named Niha took him away from his incarceration, she brought him to a building the likes of which he had never seen. It was like a temple, but a temple of knowledge. He found that he was as welcome as a lab rat there, nothing but another experiment to be poked and prodded and observed. He was kept in a plastic box with airholes, constantly under the watchful eye of a machine that read his heartbeat and brain activity.
He was questioned to no end.
“Who are you?”
“How did you get here?”
“What did you do to open the portal?”
“Can you show us how?”
And so Gavix answered them and did what they asked, seeing no reason to fight them. He was, after all, promised that he would be assisted in returning home to his family. They didn’t seem like they would harm him.
In front of an audience of scientists, he knelt and prayed to his Goddess to take him home. When nothing happened, they shook their heads and scribbled little notes on their clipboards, claiming that a primitive creature such as he could never have opened a portal into the future. That was when they hooked him up to the machines to record his brain patterns. He showed abnormal levels of activity.
“That’s amazing,” a scientist said one day after checking up on Gavix in his plastic prison. “You’re showing amazing brain levels, Mr. Eris-Prin. These are unbelievable!”
The scientist double-checked the machine’s report, making absolutely sure that he was correct, then left to fetch a senior staff member. He returned fifteen minutes later with the woman Gavix met in E.C. City Jail.
“Are you sure about those readings, Allan,” she asked, frowning over her wire-rimmed glasses.
“Yeah… he’s off the chart!”
Niha looked at Gavix over her spectacles and made a silent calculation. He felt a chill on the back of his neck. His hairs were prickling, but he found he didn’t mind the sensation.
“He can resist me,” she whispered. “How is this possible?”
Gavix shrugged and crawled into his bunk. He didn’t feel like being an experiment today. Niha stared at him for a while longer, then walked briskly away. Gavix fell asleep with the hum of machinery in his ears.
Gavix awoke to a beeping noise. There was a new addition to his plastic room. It was a thin screen connected to a tiny box: a network terminal. There was a scientist outside his room that looked eager to talk to him.
“What is it,” Gavix asked, pointing to the terminal.
“It teaches you things,” the scientist told him. “It will help you learn about your potential. Just tell it what you want and it will bring it up on the screen.”
“My potential,” Gavix asked, puzzlement in his voice.
“You’ll know in time,” the scientist said. He pushed a few buttons, then walked away.
Gavix looked at the box and scratched his head.
“Guiharia,” he said, not able to think of much else to say.
The machine made some noises, then displayed a full map of Modrian complete with his old temple. The sight made his eyes water. He was homesick…
A metallic voice spoke from the back of the box, explaining his Goddess like she was a historical myth.
“Guiharia was a popular goddess in the time of the primitive city of Modrian. Citizens believed she was their protector, and worshipped her as the patron deity of the city. She was associated with creativity, healing, and goodness. For more information, ask about The Order of Guiharia.”
Gavix was taken aback. That was his Order.
“The Order of Guiharia,” he said, and waited anxiously for the machine’s reply.
“The Order of Guiharia was a sect of religious warriors. They worshipped the deity Guiharia and believed that she gave them powers over their enemies. When their temple was destroyed in The Sacking of Modrian, the Order was disbanded. Smaller groups of devout worshippers survived for a few years, then completely dissolved around the year 610.”
Gavix sat, astounded. His Order was gone. It was completely destroyed in the… what was it? Sacking of Modrian? Suddenly fear gripped him. What about his family? Were they safe?
“The Sacking of Modrian,” Gavix screamed at the machine.
“The Sacking of Modrian occurred in the year 603 when a strange rift appeared in the center of the city, releasing an unknown number of unknown creatures on citizens and nobles alike. The only survivors were a band of religious warriors of The Order of Guiharia.”
Gavix felt both relieved and nervous. His family could very well have been killed, but the Order could have taken them to safety as well. Gavix pondered this, recalling the promise he made his Goddess say before he stepped through the rift into this world of noise. He made her promise to keep them safe until he returned… but now he didn’t know if he trusted his Mother to keep her promise. He didn’t even know if she existed anymore. He wouldn’t wait for his faith to bring him home. He needed to get back to his family.
Gavix said the one word that would change his life forever, triggering the vocal sensors in the terminal before him. He said the one word that would take him to places and power he never knew he could obtain.
Gavix cleared his throat.
“Rifts,” he said, then began to study.
That was ten years ago, Gavix thought as he played with the electricity in his hands. Ten long years. He was still in his plastic box, but he was given much more freedom. He was allowed to roam the museum floor, allowed to browse the net as he wished. He even made a guest appearance at E.C.U. as a living display of historic religious study. He was more comfortable here in the future, learning all he could about physics. It was surprisingly similar to the magic he once used, and he caught on quickly. Niha one told him he was one of the best she’d ever seen.
Gavix, although skilled with many things, was specialized in a certain area of physics that had troubled the scientists that studied him. He was becoming adept at opening and closing portals between areas and short periods of time. It was when Gavix first opened a portal to the outside of his room that the scientists decided to let him have more freedom. They weren’t able to contain him anymore. He frightened them.
Gavix’s greatest achievement, by far, was a portal that opened to his own room, but five hours in the past. He watched himself through the rift, sleeping like a log hours before, unknowing of his own eyes on himself. Gavix shivered. He could almost feel his eyes creeping along his snoring back. It was unnerving.
Night after night, Gavix studied the rifts and their properties, reciting calculations in his head. He knew the formulas to create portals, but he had no idea how to direct them to certain time periods. He just ripped a hole in time and hoped it would go somewhere interesting.
One night, it did.
Gavix sat on the edge of his bed looking through a small hole in the plastic wall. It didn’t lead outside, like most holes are apt to do, but led instead to a grassy field. This was quite odd considering the soft carpeted floor and blinking lights that surrounded the room. Gavix stared through the hole and recognized a wall he had walked through many times before. The wall was the West Wall of Modrian.
Gavix grabbed his wedding ring, and then began to climb through the hole. Before he could squeeze all the way through, he noticed a glinting on the floor of his home for the past ten years.
His symbol of faith was glowing.
Gavix stumbled back through the rift and grabbed it, then eagerly climbed through the hole once more. As soon as his foot was through the opening, the rift closed, and the plastic room was silent.
Something was wrong.
Gavix was climbing between the two doorways; the one in his room in the future and the one on the grassy plain in the past. He noticed a certain heat and glanced around him.
Like a hollow wall between two rooms, a great expanse of turbulent clouds and lightning flashes extended for as far as the eye could see. Directly ahead of Gavix was the hole in his old world, the one of clear skies and forests, of sunlight and quiet. Behind him was the world of pollution and greed, of technology and heartless science. But between the two was a horror Gavix could have never imagined.
Thousands upon thousands of giant creatures hovered within the violent clouds. They hadn’t noticed him, thank whatever gods happened to be listening, but if he didn’t flee quickly, they might take an interest. Gavix quickly launched himself into the hole that led back to Modrian, but couldn’t help noticing the screams that arose from behind him.
The citizens of the glorious city of Modrian didn’t know that the 22nd day of the Month of Old Forces, the year of 603, would be their last. Nor did they hear the thunderous footsteps that shook their homes… not at first. The guards didn’t cry alarm at the approach of the strange, hovering giants because they couldn’t believe their eyes. The city was doomed.
Gavix was hiding behind a rock when the giants piled out of the tiny hole he had made to escape the future. They ripped at it until it became huge. It was at least 20 feet tall, rising into the sky until it seemed to hit the sun. Gavix watched in horror as the giants made their way to the city he had known since childhood. He remembered what the computer said. He remembered The Sacking of Modrian.
Gavix felt a prickling at the nape of his neck. Power was in the air. He snatched it like a tangible thing, muttering formulas and calculations to himself. He wove the energy into raw power and flung it at the rip in time.
Nothing happened.
A cry of hopelessness escaped Gavix’s lips. He was the cause… he destroyed his own home! His mind desperately tried to wrap itself around the paradox he had created. He arrived again and again to the same conclusion… he was the cause. His family, his city, his temple, his Order, all gone because he wanted to go home! Gavix collapsed on the grassy plain at the foot of the giant rip and stared upward at the hundreds of giant creatures pushing and shoving their way into his home. This would have never happened if he had just stayed home with his wife and child. It would have never come to this if he hadn’t gone to the temple…
Something felt warm in his right hand.
Gavix raised his hand against the blue sky and stared at the glowing ring on his middle finger. It was the symbol of his Order, rescued from the floor of his plastic room in the Museum. It glowed so much it burned on his finger. It pulsed with energy.
Gavix screamed as loud as he could manage, drawing the attention of as many of the creatures as he could. He bellowed a word he had never heard before, a word that was filled with the power of goodness at it’s strongest. The ring on his finger glowed as brightly as the sun above him, focusing his mind and faith in one powerful beam of banishing energy. His hand began to vibrate, shaking uncontrollably, exploding in a pulsing globe of bright light.
“You have done well,” said a singing voice in his head.
“Mother!”
“Yes, child. You have returned to me.”
“You trapped me in that awful place! The stink of it, Mother! It was terrible! What was your reason? Why did you make me go?”
“Look around you, Gavix. Do you not see the power you now possess?”
The giants were all fading from view, their skin and flesh becoming transparent. They were being forced back into the rip by the light from Gavix’s ring.
“I see it, Mother. What am I? What have you made me?”
The voice in his head took on a calmer tone.
“You are rebuilt, recreated. You are no more a mortal of this world. You have risen above these people.”
“What about my family,” Gavix asked, still focusing his power on the ring.
“They will be all right, Gavix. They have not aged a day, yet you are ten years older, smarter, wiser. Do you realize that this is the same exact day I sent you to the future? They don’t even know you were gone. You have a choice… you can go back to them and try to live with their questions and discomfort, or you can leave them safe in the knowledge that they will be protected by me until the day they die. Gavix, you don’t belong with them any more. You belong with me.”
The giants were gone. The plains were quiet except for Gavix and the voice of the only thing he ever believed in singing her words in his mind. He stood there, alone, knowing that she was right.
“What happens if I go with you?”
“You have proven yourself to me. I will grant you immortality.”
Gavix remembered the pollution. He remembered the death and noise that would greet him years from now in the future. He remembered the violence and hate, the ignorance and pain. He remembered the death of faith.
“I do not want to live to see the future. I know it’s curse.”
“As do I. I know it’s curse quite well. You prayed to me while you were gone. Do you know why I didn’t hear you?”
“No… I thought you abandoned me.”
“It was because in the future, I am dead. I have seen my own death and can do nothing to prevent it, Gavix. I need you to protect me. I need you to protect belief in magic. I need you to protect faith itself. That is why I want to grant you immortality. You have proven yourself worthy. Now kneel.”
Gavix was flustered. He was flattered. Slowly, he knelt, wondering how his family would survive without him.
As if in response, the voice chimed.
“They will find their own way, Gavix. Your son will follow your path to goodness. One day he will pray to you, Gavix. One day you will be together again, all of you.”
“Good,” Gavix said. “That is good.”
“Now relax, Gavix Eris-Prin. Relax and know yourself.”
Grist was staring out the window again. His mother smacked him lightly on the back of his head.
“Get ye away from the window. Waiting like a dog won’t bring your da back,” she scolded.
Grist glanced at his mother, then turned back to watch the clear blue sky. He had found one of his Father’s old talismans from the Order of Guiharia and had taken to carrying it around after his disappearance. He rubbed it, saying prayers that he was convinced went unheard, while staring at the sky. He never knew why he did this, nor why he carried that talisman around with him. It was shiny and reminded him of his Father, but there was a hidden power lying deep in the cold metal of the amulet and chain.
Sometimes… sometimes when he looked into the clouds on a sunny day, he could see his Father looking back at him. From the clouds, Gavix Eris-Prin smiled on his only son.
Tales & Songs
