A Story of Forever

Part 17

And so the days turned into years and Navee and Amnee got older. Mamon had to hold their tongue, hold their tongue, and hold their tongue in front of the Uzras. And Mamon had to go along with the Uzras and their plans and their demands and their cruelty.

And Mamon couldn’t take it anymore. They had had enough.

The Uzras were having a grand party at the mansion of Varli, a Yemar who had betrayed his side and was loyal to and privileged by the Uzras. There, they were drinking and feasting and giving out loud, raucous laughter.

And so Mamon went to the party, uninvited. They had lost complete control of themselves. They didn’t know what they were doing or why they were doing it. All that they knew was that they were ready to explode. They had held the pressure inside of them and inside of them and inside of them for so long and now they just couldn’t, they just couldn’t hold it in anymore.

There was a slave at the door greeting all the guests as they came in and taking their coats. The slave smiled and pretended to be jovial. But Mamon knew the reality of having to pretend in front of the masters too well. Mamon knew how to truly look. And Mamon looked into the eyes of the slave and knew that they were breaking apart inside, as all slaves were.

Mamon knew though, that in this one situation, they could help.

Mamon asked the name of the slave, and they replied that it was Sadali. Mamon asked the slave if they wanted to go to the lands of Oellon and join the army of Oellon’s forces, and train for the final battle. Mamon asked if Sadali wanted to remain here, as a slave, serving the Uzras and their allies for years longer before they went to Oellon anyways.

Sadali replied that they wanted to go join Oellon’s forces now. But they were too much of a coward to. It was too hard to just do it themselves, and they would remain a slave for many years longer before going to their final freedom.

Mamon asked Sadali if they had any other slaves around them who would miss them, and Sadali replied that they didn’t.

And so Mamon told Sadali that they would help them go to their final freedom much faster, that they could send them to Oellon immediately. And Sadali thanked them with tears in their eyes, keeping quiet so that none of the Uzras could hear them.

And so Mamon took Sadali out to where all the Uzras were. And they sent Sadali to Oellon, to their final freedom, where no-one could lord over them and make them work for them. Where no-one could treat them as an inferior and deny them kindness and respect. Where they could train and plot to get revenge against anyone and everyone who had ever hurt them.

The Uzras saw this and they were very enraged at Mamon for taking away their slave, and they drove Mamon out of the party. They were too busy partying though to follow them out and beat them, as they usually would. And so Mamon sat in Puri’s woods, ruminating.

At the meeting between themselves and Sadali, they were even more disturbed. They hated having to send Sadali away from this world in order to set them free. But it was all that they could do. And it was not fair, not fair, it was not fair at all. Everything was too twisted and corrupted and evil. Everything was a horror.

The rage grew and built inside of them until they were like a volcano about to erupt, all the inhibition snapping and falling away from them.

They marched back to the party and demanded to be let in. The Uzras, of course, did not let them in. And so then Mamon reminded Karkion that they had shared a cup of sweet, spicy Tzai together and that meant that they were equals. They reminded him that Tzai was only shared between equals, and Karkion accepting it from Mamon meant that they were the same. Therefore Karkion had to let Mamon into the party.

Karkion was appalled and indigent at Mamon’s boldness. But what Mamon had said was true. And therefore Karkion would have to let them in. He told the others that Mamon would not cause too much trouble. He resolved to have them punished later. And punished very harshly.

Mamon came in and immediately began to insult all the Uzras. Because their head was not working at all in that time. They said that the Uzras were power-hungry, they were vain, they were greedy, they were thoughtless, they were ignorant, they were cowardly, they were cruel, they were unkind. All of these things were true.

But the Uzras could not stand to be insulted, especially by a lowly and disloyal Yemar of a bad reputation. The Uzras wanted to think of themselves as the grandest, most respectable, most perfect, most great beings ever. They wanted to think of themselves as flawless. And they wanted to be praised by everyone. Not insulted. Never insulted. No matter how true the insults could be.

And so the Uzras all came up to Mamon one by one. And they challenged Mamon. And they insulted Mamon back. And they insisted that themselves and their people were flawless and undeserving of insults.

Mamon insulted them each one by one, their scathing, biting tongue speaking of each and every Uzra that challenged them. They laid bare all the horrible, sordid deeds that the Uzras had done and they made it clear to everyone that their veneer of respectability would not be able to hold up.

The Uzra children at the party were hearing of all the horrible things that their parents had done, all the ways that their parents had been cruel. And they were hearing an account of the world seen through Yemarian eyes. They were hearing all the things that the Yemars wanted to say but for their safety could not.

And the Uzras could not allow all that. They had to pull the social order back to what it was meant to be. They had to punish Mamon.

Mamon, still not in control of themselves, declared that Sheen and Monnia and Holder would lay bare to all the children what the truth of the Uzras was. They confessed that the three were dead because of Mamon’s doing, and with their deaths all of the injustices of the Uzras would he avenged.

Now the Uzras had finally had enough. They declared to Mamon that they would torture them for eternity. They would make them wish that they had died. And nothing would be of solace to them. Nothing would give them comfort from their never ending pain.

Mamon finally felt fear in their heart, a heart which was until then overrun by anger. They ran from the mansion, with the Uzras hot in pursuit of them. They ran and they ran through the woods and the clearings. And they ran through the grasses in the meadows. And they ran past the refuges they had set up in the wilderness.

When they had finally put a great deal of distance between themselves and the Uzras, they sat down in the wild lands, in Puri’s wild lands, beside a large, cool, flowing river. There they built a fire and they made a net. They made a net because they were afraid. They were afraid of going into the river.

But they knew that sinking into the river was what they must do. So they used their fire to burn the net and they became a fish, a salmon to be precise, within the river. There they swam and they swam in the murky depths.

The Uzras came upon the fire of Mamon, and the burnt remains of the net. One of the Uzras looked at the pattern of ashes left by the burnt net and from that determined that Mamon had become a fish in the river.

Karkion set his cormorants out and they dove down into the water and caught Mamon the salmon. Karkion forced Mamon to take a normal shape once again, and the Uzras took them into a cave.

Naia was trailing behind the Uzras, silent, watching in horror as it all unfolded.

Karkion got Navee, the young child of Mamon and Naia. And he got Amnee, the little girl that the two were raising, the little girl who was Karkion’s. He turned Amnee into a ferocious yet tamed wolf, and the wolf tore into and violently, painfully killed Navee, who screamed in fear and pain as he died.

Naia watched all of this and screamed in anguish. But the Uzras did not hear her. Only Mamon did.

The Uzras next bound Mamon to a large rock in the cave, using the intestines of the dead Navee, Mamon and Naia’s son. They put incredibly powerful and intense binding spells on the intestines, turning them to iron, making it so that Mamon could not move in them and could not break free of them. Making it so that even Naia could not break them.

And over Mamon they hung a poisonous snake, who would drip venom into Mamon’s eyes, making them thrash and writhe so hard that the earth itself shook.

The Uzras told Naia to come with them, that they would all go back to the lands of the Uzras together. And Naia did go with them, because she had to and because Aldo and Sakava were waiting back there. But Naia took a piece of herself and left it in the cave with Mamon.

The part of Naia that was in the cave with Mamon held a bowl over their eyes so that the poison would not drip into them. But every once in a while, she had to go and empty the bowl. And in that time, Mamon would scream and thrash in agony. Their thrashing would be so powerful that it would cause earthquakes in the world.

There, in the cave together, Mamon and Naia told each other stories. They told each other every story that they could remember. The truths and injustices and resistances small and large that the people witnessed and went through. The fantastical tales of hope and liberation that the Yemars passed around to each other to give each other strength. The humorous tales the young ones made. The melancholy tales that helped people express their sorrow. All the stories. All of them.

And they hurt. And they waited. And they planned.

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