local settlement date 35,993
You can change your mind dayly.
King Namor Zujahrah
29 the last war
On the thirty-sixth day of marching, they came to the mountain named Seat of God. Had god been a giant 10 or 20 times the size of an average beast angel, it would have been an apt name.
It looked so much like a place for a God to sit that every Barbancorian knelt and prayed.
"These people need to be saved from their belief in God."
The three thousand of the army, not God fearing, watched in astonishment while 670,000 soldiers mumbled meaningless homage to an ancient lie.
"If we had a ship with us, we could knock the seat of God off the mountain onto the city of killer dogs."
"And Pigs. King Namor."
"Those are pigs. Fields of pigs. Grown like corn."
"Grown on corn. And their large number is the reason the lake is that foul colour. And it is also the reason for the sent in the air."
Namor looked at the soldier who had told him about the pigs.
"We have a few pigs on our island. But I don't presume to tell you about pigs, King Namor. What I wanted to say is that I work a small quarry off the coast of Adrone Island. A rather barren land mass but very beautiful rock."
"I am guessing that there is something significant about the rock these soldiers of Barbancor pray too. Is is God stone."
The rock man smiled.
"The rock they pray too is sitting most precariously. I know how to bring that rock down. There is a crack in the mass of rock below it. If we prepare the rock under it with a massive wedge, we can break off a large part of the mountain. It would put an end to your war before it started."
Namor and Barbaralba walked with the man to the Seat of God.
"What do we have to do."
"Cut down all the dead trees on the other side of the mountain."
"You want to make a large fire."
"No. A large wedge. The trees will be jammed into the gaping crack until there is nothing but dry wood. It must be beaten in until not another branch will fit in. Then we must soak it. And when the wood has taken on the water, the wood will push on the rock with great force. Then we must only push the back of the seat onto it and it will come lose. The mountain will fall into the valley. Magalax will be buried."
"That is what we will do. It is your job. You have 600,000 soldiers."
"My name, King Namor, is Barnin. I fought with you and Barbaralba in the first invasion of the Barbancorian army."
"Barnin, today we work with you to build a wedge. And you will have also fought in the last battle with the Barbancorians. And your name will be recorded in the manifest. The man who brought down the seat of God."
Barnin smiled and made his plan know to those standing. Those standing told those not standing to rise and gather dead trees.
Below them in the great walled city temple of Magalax, the priests prepared for battle. It was the first battle in the history of the city temple. Had they not received an ultimatum from the priests of the Sacred City, they would not have know that the army had intended battle. The priests that had brought the ultimatum where thrown to the dogs so that those on the mountain could see and hear the answer Magalax had for the army of 600,000. Their walled temple was nearly impossible to penetrate. Their arrogance was founded.
Some of the dogs were let out to attempted the mountain slope but none were designed for mountain climbing. They were good at killing and not much more. They were a simple reminder to stay away.
The sun was going down for the day. The wedging and pounding of wood into the main fault of the seat had been completed.
Namor attempted the nearly impossible task of explaining to the Barbancorians wood cutters and wedge makers that the shocking reality of the situation was that there was no one true god. There never was a god to hand down laws to priests or royalty.
The belief was created and the concept locked into the language and the mind and the culture with such tyrannical force generation after generation until the lie becomes more real than the reality lost to the lie.
That, unfortunately was killing them. Their separation from life with an obedience to a eternal fire death cult, made it possible to believe there was something other than what was. And this madness did not give what was a chance to be. But rather, in their arrogant belief in a made up law, they had methodically raped and plundered the rest of life until most rivers were without fish and most people were ignorant slaves.
The first law was survival. Nothing stood above it. Or without it.
Without a reverence for life there would be no creature that became gods.
"Piss on the seat of God. On the dry wood. Tomorrow the seat will no longer wait for an ancient lie."
Most of the Barbancorians were not certain what the King of War was talking about. Namor had to show them what he meant.
The first three thousand understood fast enough. Throughout the night and through the next day, 600,000 soldiers had urinated in the crack of the seat of God.
By the late afternoon, the wood had acquired a stringent oder. The priest of Magalax were in a rage at what they thought was meant as an outright blasphemy. Though their best defense was behind their temple wall, a small army of indignant priest took it upon themselves to attempt the hill with a pack of hungry dogs.
Some of the priests climbed close enough to get shot with an arrow. Some got hit by rocks thrown at them from above. Bleeding priests set the hungry dogs into a rage and many of the priests were ripped apart by their own dogs.
After the short pathetic battle, six hundred soldiers went with thirty-six fresh cut trees to the top of the seat of God and made levers of the trees and slowly brought the large rock, the back of the seat, into motion.
It screeched when it finally budged from its long resting place. Then the bottom of the rock slipped back toward the 600, throwing them back, many down the backside of the mountain.
Some breaking bones. Some bruising heads.
The rock rolled forward, fell off its perch and crashed onto the seat of God. Ripping open a crack that crawled through the rock until it found air again.
And in one motion, the mountain of rock floated freely like a water fowl sliding to a stop on a still pond until it burst into the valley taking everything above and much from below the surface and plowed it all into the lake and covered it with so much rock that it would take 600,000 soldiers 60 years to move the mountain again. To find only a layer of dust that might be detected as something other than the rest of the rock of the mountain.
After the thunder had settled, there was a shocking silence.
"Esau's revenge."
Barbaralba looked at Namor but did not bother to ask. He smiled.
"I think, King Namor, we can go now."
Namor put his nose onto Barbaralba hair to breath in her smell.
"We are brutal beasts, My Love."
"Let us see where we go from here."
After the return march over rocky passes and dusty valleys and a few days at the mountain river, they came again to the the river that flowed from Magalax through the Sacred City. Barbaralba wanted so much to jump into it but the smell held her back from the crawling bile.
By the time they had marched back to the Sacred City, The Drave King was furious. He was tired of the smell of the river. He was disgusted with the history of the planet.
He made many proclamations, all basically the same, throughout the Sacred City. He repeated what he had said at the Seat of God. So all would know that their lives were not above the lives of the fish that had been blotted out of their rivers.
He promised every freedom from tyranny. He promised the knowledge and technology to make the new law, the basic law that must represent the law of survival and the laws of physics. The law that would demand the end of ignorance in a creature that had the talent to be gods.
"Barbaralba. The talents we possess are far too dangerous for us to be ignorant. It was a horrible lie that they beat into our ancestors so many generations ago. A horrible horrible lie."
"I've seen it, Drave King. We will make it clear. We must still have the patience to practice gentle protocol."
Namor laughed at Barbaralba.
"Let's visit the other cities on the way back to our island. Let them know the next ships will be without guns. And then we will go back to my village and stay there until the baby is born. Then you can come back and teach them. You can bring the Old Priest and the Old King and the rest of your family. And we will help them and they will help us and we will wake up from our sleep of terror and ignorance to learn what it is to be the gods."
"Baby. Did you say baby."
"That's what happens, Drave King, when two creatures of the opposite sex have sex."
"I guess I knew that. We better get you somewhere safe and quiet to have your baby. I've heard babies like to start slow and quiet."
"And mother's like to have their man do everything for them so they can relax and give the baby all the comfort it needs to start its life."
"Don't you worry about a thing."
There were many from Angel Island who stayed in the Sacred City. They wanted to take hold of the opportunity to be part of the salvation of Sacred City. Or they wanted the adventure of a new land. They wanted to give themselves work as teachers and builders and trades men.
The close to a thousand that stayed were replaced on the ships by those wanting to go to Angel Island to be the firsts to learn the new technologies from the old knowledge.
The news of the Sacred City and the falling of the seat of God on Magalax had arrived to Dargadon before the ships. The ships of Dargadon had not returned with the plunder they had hoped for.
Six days Namor and many others who had heard it enough to know it, made their declaration of peace. Explained the threat of extinction that was resulting from ignorance and war mania.
The problem of living on a planet with no fish.
No one really believed that God was a mean lie propagated by tyrants through the laws of terrorism. But many started to comprehend the meaning and significance. The older ones would have to leave it for the younger ones to fully understand that they had inherited a disaster. And the disaster had to be fixed fast.
If not, their children would have no children.
On the seventh day, they set sail again. Visiting Asstars where they were not so well received but managed to leave their protocol. And visiting Havatara where they were given a grand welcome.
And then they passed the burnt ruins of Bavina. And many small fishing villages.
"How do you feel, Namor."
"I feel a little funny about my involvement in the death of so many fellow creatures. But I also feel hopeful that we may wake up and learn to live in the world we have and maybe even the worlds we are yet to have or make."
"How do you feel about right here now."
"Right now, on a ship, with the sounds of waves and wind. And your voice. The smell of you and the air."
Barbaralba pressed herself against him.
"I love you. You make me feel I'm here and that the thoughts in my head can make a difference for the now of this planet. You help me see that it is worth the fight against the nearly impossible for the chance. The chance that I'll wake up each day with the smell of you in my nose and the sound of your breathing and your voice in my ears. And see you look at me like only a goddess of eternal love can look at a struggling creature of flesh and blood in a universe of fire and ice."
"Go on."
Namor laughed and continued his explanation to Barbaralba of what an angel was. He told her of the mythology of the goddess of life and that he could see her when he saw her look at him. He explained the underlying fear and hatred of women in books of the monster God. He told her of the many names of the murdering merchants who calculated a monitory value for everything and creature. He explained that the ultimate sin was belief and obedience. He told her that the snake as a symbol of wisdom was the true lover of the life that was inherent in woman. He explained to her that life is what turned the universe from hell to paradise. That the road to the gods was a hard path that could not be defined by conniving tyrants. He explained how life was a grand leap beyond sand bumping into other sand on the beach. And whatever the pain and however long it took, life was the matter of the matter that most matter and to have a child with a goddess of life was one of the grandest events in the universe.
"Do you think you can get the rest of the planet to understand that."
"Some do already. Some are still afraid to see into the eyes of a goddess. They fear what they don't know. They fear being an angel in a would without God the tyrant monster father to tell them what to do and how to be."
"You teach them how to overcome their fear, Namor."
"I'll do what I can, Barbaralba."
chapter 30
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