Charon

His mother prayed every day.

She always made time to stop by the intricate idol in the center of the clan, and she always brought him with her. She would kneel before the statue, carved from pieces of bone and cinnabar the clan could gather, bow her head, dip her nose to the rot and fester under their claws, and mutter in a language even she did not know. She taught him how, in all of its complex simplicities. She showed him exactly how to kneel, how low to bow one’s head, and told him with warm reverence in her voice that this was how they paid their respects to the Deity who created them.

He didn’t understand, and so she brought him to the Wyrmwood and told him a story.

He nodded, still not understanding, and she smiled and kissed his forehead.

As he grew older his mother taught him the trade of their clan, pointed out the goods that passed by as she dug out roots and other pulsing flora from the fields. She could not read or write, but she handed him pens and parchment anyway and negotiated with a shipwright, because she prayed and smiled and told him that he would fare better than she.

Winter came much earlier that year, with a fervent snowfall that shriveled away the fields' spoils. His clanmates and older siblings whispered amongst each other, and word finally found its way to him. His mother carved a small idol in their den when the snow piled ever-higher.

It was a crisis, and the clan was elated. They scraped the bottom of the barrels and toasted with snow-filled cups in the names of the deities who had brought forth such a grand display. His mother continued to pray every day in that language, warmer than the rotting pools in their den.

Eventually the snow stopped falling, and the clan tallied the damages, dusted the snow off the idol half submerged in frost, and continued with bright smiles and invigorated hearts.

And he was furious.

The barrels were scraped clean, their pockets were empty, and the ground was frozen.

And his mother kept bowing before that statue, pressing her pale nose to the snow, joy never leaving her eyes.

He wrestled his mother away from the statue and lifted her head from the frost. The clan stopped, frozen for a moment, like their breaths in the air and the rot sealed away in solid ice.

With their gazes all on him he clamored atop that statue and screamed.

They only looked at him with pity and amusement.

“Do not fuss, child.” Their leader had said. “Can’t you see the gift our Deities have brought us?”

And he, still standing atop that statue, gathered his breath and shattered the idol under his claws. He pointed to the frozen soil, how he could not dig his claws into it, how the snow had frozen over the pools, but they only shrieked and pounced upon the shards, gathering them up in their claws.

His mother muttered in that feign language as she pushed him aside to kneel before the broken fetish.

It was then, watching his mother press her nose into the solid rot, continuing to love the shattered thing before her, he understood.

His kind was doomed, because they loved, unconditionally, All-powerful and Great beasts too selfish to listen to their creations.

He left. His clan was too engrossed in their reassembly to care.

(Later he learned they had all succumbed to famine and disease not even those born in the Scarred Wasteland could overcome).




Wherever the traveling bazaar strikes its post into the soil, he follows. His wares are nothing special. His coin is small but consistent, and between his bargainings, he listens to the crowd.

The traveling caravan has much to say, and it’s residents even moreso. Fairytales and myths. Music and dance. Letters and books. Shared freely and passionately from one mouth to another or passed between claws. He listens to the storytellers and learns to mime their mannerisms in his trade. He reads the literature stocked in carts and masters their meanings in his speech.

Eventually, he uses his excess of treasure to purchase pen and parchment, and with the many stories across the bazaar as his guide he writes his own.

And when the band packs away their instruments for the day, he finds a perch above the crowd and speaks, his ink-stained script gripped tightly between his claws.

And they listen. The crowd pauses in their bustle to lend him an ear, and while most continue on with their purchases and bargains, some stay. They watch him, eyes growing ever-wider as he explains the truth that he’s discovered, paragraph by paragraph, and when his script is done and his voice is hoarse they stand before him and ask for more.

Day after day, he belts his discovery over the heads of the Trading Post, and with each passing cycle a crowd steadily grows. He bleeds his heart in words, lets out his anger and his fear in ink, and the crowd’s sentiment replies in greater fervor.

The Trading Post moves on.

He follows, with the crowd close behind.





Where one force pushes, another will always oppose it, he learns.

Many do not listen, and he does not expect them to, but those truly afraid of his words lash back. They bristle and snap, call him things most foul, proclaim him to be a liar and a fearmonger. His retorts are met with incessant heckling that drowns his words under their squaller.

Many do not listen. Even more do not give him the chance to even speak. As his crowd grows slowly, so does his reputation, for rumors always travel the furthest when they originate from the Trading Post, and those who deny his words find many a way to silence him.

And so he pushes back, louder as his anger boils within. He takes his words to the doorstep of clans. Tasks his crowd with sending out his word to all they know and beyond.

He‘s answered with blacklists and blackmail. The Trading Post denies him entry.

One member of his crowd is attacked in the night. Made into an example; their cadaver twisted and ridiculed.

His push, answered by their shove.

A shove that rammed him over the edge.

His words became the backbone to rally his forces together, in understanding, in pursuit of the truth.

If the world would not hear him, he would make them.

He speaks before a clan, his crowd close behind him. Their leader picks up their arms before he’s finished a paragraph.

The spear lodges itself in his neck, and as the handle sinks into his throat he uses the closed distance to gut the leader before their clan.

That leader dies. He does not. He weaves his breath into a needle and thread, and spurred by a myth only ever spoken, he lifts that leaders’ corpse to his side and binds it to him.

Once the suturing is complete, his wet hacks and the piercing of scales and flesh subsided, he stands before that clan and his followers and warps.

---

---

One element becomes two, swirling together within him. Harmonized like a beautiful song.

He looks out to his followers, eyes wide like when his words first proclaimed the truth, and the clan cowering before his monstrous form.

His new voice booms over the land, harmonized just like the elements inside him, bringing upon the words that would forever cement itself in history.


“Hear me now. What stands before you is not the byproduct of a blessing, nor a prayer. This that I am was made by my own claw, with needle and thread. I am a being of multiple elements, something not even those deities Sornieth worships have managed. You see, we may be their creations, but we can strive for so much more than their revenant servants, forced to bear the brunt of their selfishness. They tore this land apart bickering over who deserved it most. They continue to decimate our world over petty grudges of a time long past. They play god, but they are not. I say it’s long overdue we take the land that we were thrust upon and make it, truly, our own. Don’t you agree?”