A Story of Forever

Part 9

Now Karkion was trying to have a new son who could fight for him in the war that was to come. In the final battle. He knew that he needed more strong heirs with whom to fill his armies. But Geyna did not want to bear him another son at the moment.

So he went out across the lands and he came to find a beautiful Yemarian woman named Rindira. He asked her to sleep with him and bear him a son. She refused him, for she did not want to associate herself with the Uzras who kept her people down. And Karkion grew enraged at this answer. He did corrupted magics upon her which caused her to go mad and then he bound her and made her bear his son.

This son grew up to be a fierce and bloody warrior, with rage and hatred flowing through his very soul. It was this warrior who would finally defeat Wolver in the battle to come. But this is a story for another day. In the meantime, the warrior grew from a child to a young man. He grew into a very broad young man. And he was much doted upon by all the Uzras who saw him as their avenger.

Karkion was very pleased at his own knowledge and his own intelligence. But one of his followers told him one night, that there was one who called himself more knowledged than Karkion. Karkion was enraged, and he asked who it was. The Uzra replied that it was a Yemar named Vidarim. Karkion thought that it could not possibly be true that a Yemar held more knowledge than him, and he resolved to beat him in a game of knowing.

He went to Vidarim and wagered his life that he knew more than the Yemar. Vidarim wagered the same, knowing that he would win. And so the two had a competition, in front of all of the inhabitants of the cosmos.

Each man asked the other questions, many questions. They asked about the universe and its origins and its future. They asked about the events that occurred within the universe. And each man answered. They answered the correct answers each time. And no man could obtain an advantage over the other one. No man could trick the other one into making a mistake. And so the competition was tied for many a moons. Until finally Karkion asked about Sheen.

Karkion asked which army Sheen would be fighting as a part of during the final battle. Vidarim replied that Sheen would be fighting on the side of the Yemars, for he knew Sheen’s heart and where it truly rested. Karkion replied that he was wrong and that Sheen would fight on the side of the Uzras, for he was confident that his beloved son would come around and start following him.

Vidarim was right, but Karkion declared him wrong. He declared that now Vidarim must give up his life, as was the wager. And Vidarim went strongly and resolutely to death. For he saw that all the Yemars had seen the competition and had seen him winning against Karkion.

He knew that the Yemars would draw courage and confidence from him, and inspiration to continue resisting the Uzras in their secret, cunning ways.

In the mean time Wolver grew stronger and more powerful. And Harimon grew larger and more vast. For Wolver and Harimon were one with the predators. And so in their hearts was a nature that no man could conquer. In their hearts was a wildness that all men feared. The Uzras, with all their power and their violence, conquered nature. But they could not conquer the predators, the great wolves and the stinging snakes. These parts of nature still conquered them. These parts of nature they still feared.

For the ways of the Uzras were violence, coercion, and force. Theirs was the way of threats and pride and brute force. But the ways of the Yemars was wild and untameable, something that could never lose its sharp edge.

But as things went, there was still death and sorrow in the lands of the Yemars.

Spirug was taking his turn as a guard in the lands where the Yemars did their work. He came upon a person named Varlig, who was not going to their job. Spirug asked them why they were not going to their work. And Varlig replied that they did not wish to give the Uzras more and more gold and riches, in return for simply being allowed to live. They would not go to their work and they feared neither death nor torture.

Spirug told them that they would find death indeed, for Spirug would slay them right there where they stood.

And so the two went into battle. And Varlig was very strong and they stood their ground. They flung Spirug’s sword from his hands and rendered Spirug weaponless. But Spirug fought on. He broke off an antler from a caribou. And the caribou bled and bled until it was dead. With this jagged-edged antler, Spirug thrust into Varlig’s stomach. And they died right there.

Varlig’s sisters and mothers and all their friends and neighbours did grieve them greatly. But they were also awe-inspired by their strength and by their boldness. They knew that Varlig would be a great warrior in the final battle to come, and that not even death would be able to hold them forever. So they smiled. Even amidst their grieving, they smiled.

And Spirug bragged greatly of how he had defeated and slayed the Yemar with not even a sword. And all the Uzras upheld him as a shining example of the strength and the bravery of their kind. And they held a great feast to honour him by.

His concubine Arder, however, knew the true story from the very depths of her heart and she told the true story to all the Yemars who were in the lands of the Uzras. And they together remembered the courage and the confidence of Varlig.

One day Mamon was out in the secret places of the wild lands, taking care of all their children that they yet had. Naia was with them, for she too loved Mamon’s children as her own. They were teaching the children how to gather herbs for healing different afflictions, and were laughing and joking and playing with each other as they went.

But Karkion had spied them with his spies that he set forth across the lands. And he saw the children, and hatred welled up in his heart. For he thought them monsters, and he detested their freedom.

He gathered his armies and set forth across the wild lands, trampling on and breaking shrubs and herbs as they went. They slashed through the branches and vines of the forest and the grasses of the fields. And they cornered the children, Mamon, and Naia.

The children were all screaming and crying. They were all clinging to each other and to their parents. And their parents were clinging to all of them back. They were holding them all like their lives depended on it. And in a sense they did. There was chaos all around as the Uzras drew their weapons and Mamon and Naia spun their magic in order to hold them back.

But they couldn’t hold them back indefinitely. They were surrounded on all sides. One by one, the Uzra army took each of the young children away from their families, amidst tears and screams and pleas. One by one the Uzra army scattered each child to a different corner of the world, where they would have to grow up far away from the family which had raised them.

Eventually only Lewinn remained. He was a terrified seven-year-old, traumatized at the kidnapping of all his siblings. But the Uzras pulled and they pulled and they dislodged him from Naia’s grip.

Karkion looked at the child in the shape of a horse. And he thought that this child was a very fine horse indeed. Perhaps the best horse that there ever was. So Karkion thought to take the child for himself and to use him to ride into battle, and ride all along his empire.

And so he locked the child in his stables where his family could not get to him and he used the child for his own purposes, fettering and breaking the young one so that he would go only where Karkion told him to go and so that he would carry whatever Karkion told him to carry.

But remember that Lewinn had eight legs. Four men, each with two legs, carry the body to the funeral boat. Eight legs carry the body to the funeral boat. Lewinn with his eight legs was truly carrying the body of Karkion to its final destruction. A destruction that was eventually inevitable.

Now there was a young stablehand who got to see Lewinn in the stables. And he was a kind young man. He helped ease Lewinn’s burden whenever he could. He helped soothe the child and he listened to the child’s miseries and wonderings, his thoughts and feelings. He even shared his own.

He also taught the child everything that he knew, and the child learned eagerly, with eyes bright and neck craned in concentration.

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