Come forth, mortal! Know that you stand before one of the great gods of your existence! Which god? I could tell you my name, but for your flimsy body much of it is unpronounceable. On top of which, were you to utter my full name, you would call attention to yourself and it is not the sort of attention your mortal soul is capable of withstanding. For the moment, and to ease your troubled thoughts, you may simply call me “Carl”.
And do not be fooled by the oversimplification of my name, for I am, indeed, one of the gods who has played the games of power on your plane of existence. Most of those you know and have heard of are benevolent and merciful, but that is not me. Tremble before me, for I am a terrible power, filled with destructive impulse! There are even those among your kind who would describe me as evil.
This portion of my tale begins many cycles ago — what you would think of as being tens of thousands of your millennia ago.
Oh, you wonder about my saying there have been many cycles? Did you really think you are the first civilizations to tread upon the surface of your existence? This same game has been played before, over and over again — until the gods who remain grow weary, or you have forgotten them all. Then, they allow you to wither away and vanish into the dust and ruins … and the next cycle begins.
Consider, if you will, every culture you have ever known or heard of has some mythology about dragons, even when those cultures are far removed from each other, or are so isolated as to have never been met by another. And yet, still, dragons remain. Do you truly believe such dragons are the imagined whims of story-tellers?
In any event, it had always been my fate to be removed relatively early in a cycle — banished back to the plane of the gods to become merely an observer for all that followed. I grew tired of this, and so I devised a plan which would give me an advantage. It was a clever one … or so I thought.
One of your supposedly learned men stated, “God does not throw dice with the universe.” How wrong he was! All of the gods throw dice, and, not only that, but we all do our best to cheat — with whatever we can possibly get away with!
And so, mortal … bear ye witness to my tale!
Early in the cycle, I could see the movement of powers and knew that, as usual, I was running out of time — I would once more be banished and exiled back to the plane of the gods. Thus, this was the time to bring the first part of my plan into action!
I spoke to two of my head priests, explaining my intentions and the parts they would play. As they were, of course, faithful servants of mine, they immediately accepted their roles and waited for me to call upon them to act. Next, I found one of my devout followers who was a craftsman — a potter. He heard my voice speaking to him in a dream, telling him of a sacred relic he must craft for me. Following my instructions, he took some of his finest clay and, as a demonstration of his devotion, mixed several drops of his own blood into it as he kneaded it. This worked it throughout the clay and gave it the required energy of mortal life necessary for the clay — and the relic — to fulfill its purpose.
The relic he was to craft? It was a small urn with an emblem affixed to one side. This emblem was a tribute to my power and glory! It was studded with twin rubies, firmly held by the clay of the emblem. Then the emblem was affixed to the side of the urn, the clay mixed together that the two pieces became one. There was no break between the urn and the adorned emblem, as it must be for this relic to work. There was only one other necessary element for the relic and for my plan. The urn must have a cap which formed a perfect seal. My devout follower labored many days and nights, working his blood-soaked clay to create this tribute to me.
As soon as the urn and cap had been fired, hardening them, my priests came to the potter and collected the urn. Of course, the potter joyfully welcomed the opportunity to prove his dedication to me by using the remainder of his life essence to stain the exterior of the relic red. The priests thanked him and ensured he had a consecrated resting site before they returned to the temple with the urn.
Once there, the two retreated to the deepest inner sanctum to conduct the ritual I had instructed them to perform. The price of this ritual was for one of my priests to sacrifice his mortal soul — as is only appropriate for a high priest to do as proof of their faith. Additionally, the ritual required the willing participation of the other party.
The other party, in this case, was none other than myself. I willingly allowed myself — all of my … godly essence and power … to be gathered together and placed into the emblem on that urn. As the ritual occurred, the rubies flared deep red, illuminating the small room with their glow. The conclusion — all of myself being transferred into the emblem — happened simultaneously with the priest expiring, his body now a lifeless, desiccated husk, looking as if he had passed away years earlier.
The second priest, carrying out his role, carefully placed the cap onto the urn, sealing it — and sealing me away inside. Oh, I could still sense my surroundings, but for all of the other gods, it was as if I had vanished, leaping off to another plane. As they typically considered me an afterthought, I am sure they were relieved to feel they did not need to concern themselves with my actions any longer.
With the urn sealed, the priest carefully took it with him and traveled a great distance into the desert, to the ruins of a village from some previous cycle. There, he found the corner of an ancient building — now long since fallen — and placed the urn there, next to one or two others, and heaped sand upon all of them. His task complete, I released him from my service and, as a final act of devotion, he journeyed still deeper into the desert until thirst and hunger claimed him.
All of the first step performed, my plan was now fully in operation. Yes, I was temporarily locked inside of the urn. “Temporarily” being the most important aspect of that, as there were two methods by which I might become freed. In a “worst case” scenario, if the emblem were to be broken or destroyed, I would be freed, but I would be instantly returned to the plane of the gods. If this happened, it would be as if I had been removed from the cycle early, and had spent the rest of the time being an observer.
However … and here was the trick … if the urn were to be opened … I would also be released. But, in this case, I would be released back to my full power and able to act and influence your mortal existences once more. The urge of your kind to dig up old treasures and relics typically does not occur until much later in a cycle. You all spend so much of your civilization’s growth doing new things that it’s only after you’ve run out of novelty you begin to dig deep into your own history, questioning what might have come before in this cycle and being surprised to discover evidence and clues of earlier cycles.
And thus, sealed away against a time much later in the cycle, I did the only thing I could do — I slept.
I knew the urn would not be uncovered until perhaps thousands of years later. If I were forced to experience every moment of time until that happened, I am certain it would have driven me mad. Of course, there are those followers of other gods who would argue such a change would be imperceptible.
Thankfully, we gods do not experience time as you mortals do. We are able to control how “quickly” events pass for us. If there are many critical events occurring all at once, we can slow down how we interact on your plane, allowing us to see all of them in what you would think of as being the mere blink of an eye. Conversely, we can also accelerate the rate at which things happen.
And that is exactly what I did while I waited. Time flickered past — years, decades, centuries, flashing by. Occasionally, I would sense something digging through the sand and I would slow my experiences enough to determine it was just some sort of small creature burrowing, and not your kind investigating history.
Until, finally, after an uncountable number of years … there it was! The slight lightening of the surrounding sand and a barely-perceptible increase in the amount of sunlight filtering through. This was followed by the soft sounds of sand being moved by a metal instrument — possibly a trowel of some sort? And then the soft whisper of bristles brushing the sand away from the area. The time had arrived!
I immediately returned myself fully to experiencing the normal passage of time, waiting for a mortal to pull the urn out. Even if the cap was not immediately unsealed, a momentary contact of flesh to the emblem would allow me to plant the thought in another mind … “Open the urn.” I chuckled to myself at how well my plan had succeeded.
Suddenly the surrounding sand was removed in its entirety and bright sunlight streamed down into the hole which had been dug. I’m sure whoever was working there thought the flash of light from the rubies was simply the overhead sun hitting the gems just right, not realizing that I was now “seeing” things through them.
I could feel the urn being lifted out, but the hand grasping it was on the wrong side, leaving the emblem untouched. Internally, I raged in frustration. “Touch the emblem, fool, that I might be freed!” Once out of the ground, the hand turned the urn this way and that, and then another hand reached towards the emblem to caress it.
“Yesss… come to me. Touch this and then I will invade your mind and finally conquer this plane!”
The fingers brushed across the surface of the emblem. My power surged … only to be denied entrance through the embrace of flesh.
“What is this? Why do you wear a second skin? No!!!”
There was some sort of additional layer that prevented contact. I could not reach the fool who had removed the urn from the ground to command him to open the cap and release me. A moment later, the urn was placed on the surface of the ground, next to some worthless other items such as a broken jar and a plate.
I had no choice but to continue waiting. My time would come — very soon now, I was certain. If not this mortal, another one would touch the emblem and I would be able to rise to my full power and glory.
After the sun had finished its travel across the sky, the mortal gathered his tools and walked away.
“What? No! Come back here, you idiot! Know you not what you leave behind? Take these treasures with you!”
Perhaps he intended to return the next day. I would never know for certain.
Once he left, night fell quickly. I suppose it was an odd gallery of unearthed treasures — if treasures they could all be called — left sitting there in the middle of nowhere. I attempted to use what limited senses I had to determine what had changed nearby. One thing that struck me was that now, instead of it being a largely flat and open desert, behind the ruin of the building the urn was in, the landscape now sloped down into a small ravine behind where my urn stood.
I continued sensing at a distance when I suddenly realized something had crept up close. Quickly pulling my senses back to the urn I “looked”, causing the rubies to briefly flash once again.
Standing in front of the artifacts was some sort of canine-like creature. As soon as the rubies lit up, it barked in surprise, and then began to growl.
“Stupid mutt! Go away! You are useless here!”
I don’t know if somehow my words or thoughts made it into that feeble canine brain, but it lowered its forepaws, bringing its snout to the same level as the urn, staring into my “eyes” and growling even more.
“Go AWAY!”
The rubies flashed a brilliant red, scaring the animal, and it leapt forward, bumping into the urn. As if in slow-motion, the urn began to rock back and forth, and then tipped over backwards, falling off whatever platform or surface it was on.
Once it had fallen, it began to roll down the slope, bumping into several rocks and other protrusions along the way. With each bump, the urn developed another crack. I could see the end in sight — with the emblem breaking and my return to the plane of the gods — my ploy failed. The rolling and damage continued until, at the bottom of the ravine, the urn landed on a very pointed rock, which shattered it.
Unfortunately, it was the back of the urn which struck the rock and resulted in the urn breaking. The emblem, on the front, was undamaged. Even worse — the neck and cap of the urn were left intact, as a separate piece.
This was an outcome I had not foreseen, nor possibly imagined. The urn was no longer complete, but because of the way the ritual had been conducted, I was still sealed in the emblem. And that seal could not be broken unless the emblem were destroyed or the urn was uncapped. Even though the urn was no longer whole — the cap was still in place!
Even worse, using the limited senses I had available to me from the emblem … I couldn’t sense the neck and cap. And I had no idea of where they might be. Of course, the rest of the urn was within an arm’s-span of the emblem. But there was nothing to say it would have to remain that way, and so long as that remained intact with the emblem intact, I would be trapped here.
Perhaps my only hope would be if a mortal grabbed the emblem and kept in contact with it long enough for me to invade their mind, convert them to be a follower, and then had them act on my behalf. Somewhere, far off in the distance, I imagined I could hear one of the other gods laughing at the trick which had been counter-played upon me, removing me from the playing board not just now but until I was finally freed.
My grand plan had backfired on me. Until something else changed, there was now nothing I could do. So, with that in mind, I did the only thing I could — I slept once more.
It is an eternity later. I know not how many cycles have passed, as I stopped counting. All I know is that the neck and cap remain sealed, and the emblem unbroken. I have amused myself throughout these ages by inflicting my will upon insects and other small creatures which have chanced upon me.
As time has passed, I have learned that the potter who crafted the urn was too good. The emblem, and I presume the neck as well, are not only unbroken, but seem to be unbreakable. I have used my influence over creatures to have them toss the emblem around, or drop it from a height, and it somehow survives every time. Perhaps it is my own essence infusing it which gives it strength, but I have no way of knowing.
Were it not for my ability to sleep for centuries and millennia, I would surely have gone completely insane by now. I do not even have the ability to return to the plane of the gods. All I can do is inhabit this emblem, and occasionally have one group of small creatures wage terrible conflict on another group to assuage my need to demonstrate my power.
