by SC Huggins
She shook her head.
“Because I broke the seal without your permission?” he struggled to his knees. She stared at his broken wings and marveled at his power.
“No.”
“I p-praised you too much?”
“Stop.”
“I-I—”
“This is my decision.”
“Evil masked in beauty,” he spat in condemnation.
She turned and walked away.
“I could have given you anything you wanted!” he shouted at her back.
“I could have given you anything you asked for,” he moaned.
“I could have given you back the life you gave me!”
The Ancestral Mother quickened her footsteps, heading for the darkness of the trees. She stopped at the edge and took a deep breath. “I’m sorry.”
He was just too powerful; it would render him uncontrollable in the future.
But it wasn’t the real reason.
“I’m sorry.”
“Evil masked in beauty,” she whispered.
The Ancestral Mother swiveled to stare in his direction. She saw his plea and anger. I’m sorry.
He gave one last gasp and went silent.
Dawn of creation
5366 AME.
She would destroy this world and create another.
The Ancestral Mother closed her eyes and breathed in deep, the reassuring, refreshing smell permeating Uwan softening the ridges on her forehead. The invigoration it inspired threatening to shake the foundations of her intentions.
Uwan reeked of the vivacity of life, a reawakening of the body the likes of which existed nowhere else. Long golden lashes lifted in a languid movement and she stared up at home far above Uwan into the ancestral realm. It brought to mind the dawn of creation, when the world was devoid of substance and color. There was the Ancestral realm, stretched out in a great spread of space as far as her eyes could see. A beauty of white filled with peace and tranquility, but achingly lonesome. Its never-ending expanse didn’t serve its purpose of reaffirming her might. No. Instead, it left her lonely and dissatisfied.
She created lesser life forms on Uwan and watched them grow; and excitement about her new project gave her the purpose she badly needed.
With the solid weight of the great black stone supporting her from behind, Uwan stretched out in its glory; and the key to the great black stone clasped in her mighty hand, The Ancestral Mother knew contentment.
To stay right in this spot, admiring her work meant everything- peace, satisfaction, life. But not entirely, because it wasn’t perfect. She needed her creation almost as perfect and beautiful as she, the great Mother decided. She grimaced as familiar feelings of anger and guilt coursed through her. In the beginning, she brought two creations into being. The first, perfect and sweet resided with her in the ancestral realm. The second was even better as she had grown more proficient in using her creative powers and remained what it was to this day- her first claim to creative genius.
The unusual turn of events forced her hand into doing something distasteful. Something she vowed never to repeat, but was about to do now.
This was her world; she could create and destroy as she so wished. But a frisson of guilt shot through her at that thought. Just small changes, that was all. She wasn’t thinking of destroying Uwan. She had done it before, it wouldn’t be so bad, look how well the great black stone turned out, tamed.
Changes, her lips twisted in a telling grimace as she considered how great those changes truly were. More like an overturning.
“Grrrr,” the ewr made a sound of distress at the expression on its Mother’s face.
Her grimace morphed into a reassuring smile for the ewr. With a lithe movement, she transferred the square shaped black key, created to unlock and lock the black stone from her right to left hand. She stroked the ewr’s black hair with her free right hand, love and regret waging a war in her heart.
Her hand trembled, scattering its silky black locks- the ewr’s only claim to beauty. Evil masked in beauty.
She faltered.
The regret won.
Soon, the ewr and other creations would cease to exist.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
She pulled away from the ewr and hardened her heart against the puzzled look it shot her.
Resolve closed an icy grip around her heart, stiffening her spine in readiness for the task ahead. Shoulders resolute, The Ancestral Mother tightened her golden tipped talons on the key and turned towards the great black stone.
She stopped before the great black stone. Its familiar sight pushing a hot ball of pain up her throat. Doubts and a feeling bordering on shame assailed her. If she took this step, there was no going back. Never had she been this torn, not when she created her home, the ancestral realm and finally brought her roaming through the endless expanse of the world to a stop. Not when she brought her greatest accomplishment, Uwan into existence and never during the creation of these condemned creatures.
Just once had she suffered so, during the transformation of the black stone. With a sigh, she held up the key and stared hard at it. If she was honest with herself- and The Ancestral Mother always was- since she was answerable to no one- the great black stone was responsible for these foreign emotions of doubt and guilt. If Uwan was a monumental achievement, the black stone was her biggest mistake.
The substantial weight of the key both reassured and accused. Shiny golden lashes drew down, and her eyes closed in an unsuccessful attempt to control the rising tide of failure from overflowing like the River Zari did during the last rainy season. In a fluid movement, she tipped the key towards her, exposing its eye through which it fed, and hesitated.
Did she really need to do this?
Absently, she admired the steps she’d taken to protect the black stone. The key must be fed with power from her or a life source before it could open the black stone. Her golden brows furrowed in confusion and consternation.
But what if she allowed things to stand as they were? She shook her head and smiled ruefully. “Perhaps, I should have created two worlds and explored the two situations,” she murmured.
The ewr glanced at her in question, a frown scrunching up the ugly lines of his face. She stretched forth a hand to soothe the ewr until its eyes drew closed and a peaceful look came over its features. For a moment, she stared at her hand- golden, graceful and perfect- everything the ewr was not. The new creations wouldn’t be perfect, but at least they wouldn’t be as ugly as the ewr. She shuddered and drew away. The hand that created with love would destroy in love. But she would create more beautiful and intelligent animals in their place, she reasoned determinedly.
She had never been so indecisive- like the leaves of Uwan that fell from their mother trees when dry- but never in the same spot twice. Her lips twisted in disgust at her weakness.
Her gold tipped eyes blinked open to meet the matching eye on one side of the key. The creator’s eyes remained open and unflinching as the key sensed power not far away. It vibrated in her grip.
She held still and waited. If she were made of flesh and blood as her new creations would be, the key would suck her dry. As the most powerful being in the ancestral realm, her essence was made from khorn- a dominant force in the ancestral realm.
The key’s eyelashes lifted and opened with a snap to meet hers. Its eye glowed a dark red. In the light of the day, it glittered.
That was when she felt the tall looming shadow of the ewr behind her.
She turned to meet the blank gaze of the simple creature. It blinked and the vacant expression became almost pleading. The Ancestral Mother let out an anguished sound, the gold lines of her face contorting with her pain. The ewr was not making this easy. Its low intelligence and simple-minded nature was a deliberate move on her part during creation- to make its later destruction easier if she was unsatisfied with the outcome.
The creator turned to face the seven-foot tall animal. For a moment, she stared at it, un
usually nonplussed. The ewr bent before her in a bow, causing her anguished heart to clench in distress and regret.
The ewr had done nothing wrong, but she needed more than it could offer her- intelligent and voluntary worship. Controlled by instinct, it couldn’t appreciate the power and genius of her creation, and it could not love her from the depth of its heart.
She dropped the key.
The ewr’s wide vacant eyes followed the square-shaped key until it landed with a soft thud on the white sands.
With anxious eyes, she watched the ewr sneak a peek from her to the key, before bending to study and sniff at it curiously. It sent her a questioning look. The Ancestral Mother didn’t move but stared deep into the one eye of her creation. She didn’t flinch at the extraordinary ugliness of its tall form. But she silently vowed her next creations would be more physically appealing than this.
Its one eye stretched the muscles of its face taut, further magnifying the ewr’s bizarre appearance. The ears were large, so much they stuck out like overgrown trees in a burgeoning forest through its silky black hair. Pink bulbous lips in the center of rough-hewn features completed a ridiculous and ugly look.
She hadn’t done a great job.
Mother looked past these and studied the expression, or lack of it, within its dark orbs. The cold fingers of pain and inevitability clutched at her insides. Oblivious to her distress, the ewr moved to pick the key where it lay on the grainy white sand. The key’s eye faced the ewr. She knew it couldn’t feed on the creature, ancestral never fed ancestral. She waited with bated breath, if it would show an iota of emotion, of intelligence perhaps—
As soon as its hand brushed the eye, it snapped open.
“Don’t,” she whispered.
The ewr jerked to meet her eyes.
The Ancestral Mother wasn’t being fair, and she knew it. The ewr was acting just like she created it to act.
A loud eerie cry broke the silence of the day. The ewr swung toward the sound- key forgotten- unaware it had just sealed its own fate. The Ancestral Mother picked the stone with a rueful smile.
The oldest wepia dropped before her with force, great wings nearly clipping The Ancestral Mother and prompting the creator to take a quick step back. Tipping its head back, the bird eyed its creator with keen eyes. Suddenly, it gave off a piercing cry. There were times when the ewr gave off flashes of intelligence, but not the wepia. The Ancestral Mother studied the bird and shuddered. Perhaps, she could do something with the wepia’s round head and small ears in her new creative attempt. She could certainly do without their feeding habit because the new inhabitants of Uwan would be made of flesh and blood, not khorn, the white silvery essence of ancestral creatures. With a silent vow to create better birds the next time, she turned away from the unsightly image of the large-headed bird with its ridiculously wide mouth and uglier teeth.
For a moment, she considered preserving their lives so they could live out their days with the mortals and the new animals she would create as replacements but shuddered at the mental image it conjured.
Ancestral creations could never live with mortals; ancestrals and mortals would be too different. Mortal blood would be the essence of her new creations, the great mother decided. The old ancestral creatures could feed on and grow in might by ingesting mortal blood to empower their khorn, so she’d make sure the two worlds never met.
She’d cloak the great black stone with her power rather than destroy it, and the key would remain in her possession. This way, she could avoid the pain of directly destroying her creations. None of this was their fault after all.
The other animals, ten harmless forgettable creatures she hadn’t even bothered to name, and the wepias moved to join the ewr. They dropped beside it and immediately began to gnaw at their fingers and scratch at their bellies with lazy motions as they waited on their creator. Her lips curled in amusement. She’d done well in creating them so few. Well, except for the two hundred wepias she’d thought was needed in higher quantities than the other animals.
For the past millennium, they were her only companions.
In a sudden move that startled the ewr, the creator swung around and with a huge leap landed soundlessly on the surface of the great black stone. She pressed her hand to the most powerful creation in existence and paused. Beneath her palm, the great black stone pulsed lightly. She sighed, the stone had once been more friend than subject, and she missed their conversations. With a slight tip of her great head, The Ancestral Mother forced herself to take another look around her, trying to commit Uwan to memory.
Not that there was any need to because it was indelibly etched in the eternal reaches of her mind. She’d slept with the vision of Uwan for a long time before she created it, after all.
The lolling fields, so green, vibrant and very much alive stretched out before her, its beauty and vast area, a testament and a reaffirmation of her power. Daylight glinted off the skin of the sea, its surface blue and perfect was just the right amount to give Uwan a striking aspect. The air, the sand and the blue sea would be a perfect home for the intelligent and rational beings she planned to create.
The Ancestral Mother gave the smooth surface of the great black stone a loving caress and gave a decisive nod. Her eyes caught on the animals looking up from where they still sat on the ground watching and trusting. Her animals, one of her attempts at creation. Her eyes grew moist with tears, and the great mother felt the pain of her actions as she stared.
She would fail them.
They were not far from permanent disappearance. The Ancestral Mother froze. Disappearance, not destruction just like the black stone. There was no need for the unnecessary carnage, she decided.
She would banish them to live within the stone instead. The stone pulsed slightly beneath her feet as if in response to her thoughts and she grimaced. Uncharacteristically, The Ancestral Mother hesitated yet again.
Wouldn’t it be an act of mercy to destroy them instead?
She sighed, undecided. Her selected mortal witches would shed their mortal bodies and powers to the stone before making their transition and ascension to the ancestral realm as her Dejis. The powers of the unselected witches and the essence of ordinary mortals would also be shed into the great black stone when they die.
That was a big burden for the loyal stone to bear.
How long could the black stone contain her creatures? How long could the creatures survive banishment into the great black stone? A century, a millennium?
Maybe more than that since they were more ancestral than mortal creatures. But die they would eventually. Their ‘destruction’ was cleaner this way.
The Ancestral Mother rose and walked to the center of the perfect ten square feet stone. Its smooth surface so glossy her golden lithe form reflected off it. She stopped before a slight circular elevation on the stone. The rise had a curve so smooth it became a part of the stone, only for it to end on incongruous looking eyelashes matching the small eye on the key.
Someone else could have missed it, an eye the size of a small pebble on a square stone so big.
But not the designer.
The Ancestral Mother took a deep breath and turned the key over the elevation on the great black stone until the eye on the key hovered directly over the elevation on the great black stone.
The eyelashes on the black stone lifted until it drew over the elevation and opened with a snap to expose a glittering red eye, a perfect compliment of the eye on the key. She beckoned the creatures closer. The wepias flew over in a flap of wings and wave of rotten smell to land at her feet, their huge head tilting awkwardly with their descent. The others followed.
With obvious hesitation, the ewr moved toward her in its slow looping gait.
The Ancestral Mother took a deep breath and pressed a hand to her chest to calm its erratic beat. She studied each animal, barely controlling her flinch when their eyes met. They looked back quizzically, almost vacantly.
All except the ewr.
His eyes held fear.
The Great Mother jerked her head towards the eye, directing the animals to it. They dropped in and the whirlwind within the black stone sucked them in with their screams immediately until they disappeared into the dark depths of the stone.
The ewr went in last.
Awkward and huge, it moved to its creator and stopped before the open, waiting eye and stared down into the darkness of the stone. The wind tore at its silky dark hair, blowing the strands into its one eye. The ewr tilted its head this way and that to push the hair off its eye, when it could have easily used its hand.
It turned its only eye on The Ancestral Mother and studied her- almost like the intelligent creature he wasn’t before dropping into the stone through the eye to suffer non-existence.
The creature howled, and the sound was cut short. The Ancestral Mother shivered.
She pulled the key away from the eye, and immediately, both eyes snapped close with resounding finality.
She stood, with her golden face drawn and sad, her ‘sin’ weighed heavy on her shoulders until they slumped. She looked over the now empty expanse that was Uwan. Its silence resonated with her actions, present and future.
8732 AME.
It was well over three millennia since The Ancestral Mother suffered the pain of banishing her creation to non-existence. But now, on the silvery-white seal limiting the ancestral realm from the rest of the universe, she paced and waited with barely contained excitement.
Her first Deji since the banishment would soon join her in immortal life. Of course, there was always the fear something could go wrong. Creation required a high dose of pure power applied with a delicate hand to produce stable creatures. When she overused the power, like in the black stone, the result was an out of control creature. Creation also needed more than one attempt, and after the riotous emotions of ‘condemning’ the imperfect creatures to life in the great black stone, she’d finally achieved her goal.
She stared at the glittering white line bordering the ancestral realm, and waited for the Matriarch. It took nothing to will her ascension to immortal life and transition to a Deji, but this was a new beginning and she was anxious to see the final results of her efforts.