Saga ~
Halfway Into Nightfall
The aged man who sat huddled before the dwindling fire in the darkness of the dry cavern could hear the voice of the wind seducing the dimly lighted clouds that hung motionless over the parched desert. He was as old as the desert and if anyone should have asked him his age, he wouldn’t have been able to answer with any degree of certainty.
Gathered around him in neat fashion were a multitude of clay tablets. They were inscribed with markings of his native language and the languages of the many other powerful tribes of magicians that he did not know but counted as his brethren in the fight of evil. Centuries of work had gone into the creation of these tablets. They each bore the markings of what was to be a warning to the future human race.
The wizard knew that the warning had come to late for the people of his time. Exhaling and feeling sadness course through his heart he turned his troubled thoughts inward and for a moment thought of his brothers. They had decided since the time that Her evil inflicted pain on the earth and its inhabitants that the warning could only be of significant importance to future people----but only if they were wise enough to decipher the riddle that was inscribed upon the magical tablets. More so, the tablets themselves predicted that in the future of days there would be one in who the tablets would make themselves known to. Many a night the circle of the elder magicians had gathered about the recently finished products and chanted out their murmured sayings and mystical words as they burned incense and passed their hands over the dried small grayish stone-like objects.
The old man knew, more importantly he believed, that in time, centuries perhaps, the tablets would transform into something else----just what---- he wasn’t privileged to know, but the elders assured him that they would change their appearance. He sat many nights and thought just what form the tablets would take on. He also dreamed of just who the special one, the finder that Prophecy foretold of---The One who was to unearth the tablets might be like.
shivering from a sudden stab of the night wind that crept invisibly into the small cave, he drew his coarse garment ankle length garment tightly around himself. As he leaned forward to toss another brittle clump of brushy twigs on to the fire, he wondered why Amus was so late in arriving at the cave.
The twigs that he’d thrown on to the small fire didn’t help his shivering that accompanied his mood. Deep within him he knew that the root cause of the shiver that racked his frail body didn’t have anything to do with the current climate from outside or the coldness of the cave. No. The chill he was feeling was a reaction to his thoughts of the creature he had caught a glimpse of long ago as a youth. That vile creature was the prime subject----the single most precious legacy the magicians were leaving behind----of the tablets that lie around him on the gold colored sand floor.
The screams and cries that reached his frightened ears he still carried in the forefront of his mind. Accompanying the death echoes he heard as he trembled and cried silently, crawling deeper to conceal himself from the woman and drenched from the gore of the camel carcass, was the image that burnt itself and seared into his brain. She----The one of the black hair and pale skin. She, the creature. He had heard Her laugh---Her mocking laugh—throughout that night as he cried, fearing that She would find his hiding spot within the belly of the camel. He could not ever forget that terrible sound as much as he prayed that he would like to.
The old man felt truly alone. All he had now were the comfort of the tablets and the words he was chanting in his mind. He fervently hoped that Amus would arrive soon. Given present circumstance, he wasn’t sure that even the sacred chant would keep the putrid evil one called She away. Until Amus arrived it was all that he could do however. So he sat and chanted. His voice steady, his memory sharp and defined, the verse he recited told the beginning of the legend of "She,"
The Twilight Succubus...
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One of the "Tablets of Prophecy" the old man held in his possession, inscribed with the Sumerian cuneiform writing. Jason was the "special one" who the tablets made themselves known to. As the clay tablets foretold, they did transform into something else when Jason uncovered them. They've taken on the form of a medieval parchment as a book (or, "Tome" as Jason refers to it). To learn more of the history of the Sumerian civilization and these tablets, click it.
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