Stargazer (old)

High noon, the sun is scorching the golden sand we stand upon. May the gods forgive my blasphemous mouth; right now I’m ready to sell my soul to any and every buyer who would offer a bit of water in exchange. It took nine years of my life to finish this thing; I don’t even know how many years some of the elders here lost to the mad dream of the Mage. Now his body covers the eye of Ra. I can see him glide through the sky. Why, oh why is he lighter than the air itself?

I can see the look on his face – sheer terror shines in his eyes.

The great mage, Eppa, he is second to none but his holiness the king himself, neither in political power nor in personal power. Eppa’s power is so great he could regenerate lost limps, control corpses and the weather itself. There is, however, one thing he could not do and that is to fly. His inability to reach the stars made him obsessed with them, and so he began studying them, he began devising plans to reach them. This led him to the conclusion that he needed to build a tower high enough to reach the top of the sky, to reach the gods themselves if he had to.

In order to build such a tower, Eppa needed a vast army of workers and so he enslaved a vast majority of the kingdom's population with permission from the king. He had forced them to work on the construction of his tower by reanimating the bodies of the dead and turning them into his soldiers. He had embodied them with the ability to create magical whips and chains to control the slave masses; everyone thought the gods would surely punish him for such actions – but nothing came of it.

Eppa would kidnap young children from their parents, raise them until they were two decades old, and fit to construct his tower, such is my tale. I have seen those who are really old working on the construction of this wretched tower, while Eppa himself seems rather young in appearance. One may only guess how is this possible, perhaps due to sorcery.

We kept working no matter how harsh the conditions had gotten, in the heat and in the rain, during the day and during the night, even during the sandstorms unleashed by the wrath of Seth himself. Nothing came between Eppa and his will to fly, not even the constant dying of men in his slave army. People would simply fall down on the ground, and lay there motionless from time to time. That had been commonplace around here. People would mostly die from exhaustion while there were also those who died from the abuse we suffered at the hands of the walking dead soldiers who serve Eppa as his enforcers. The lucky ones, these would die in the sandstorms, Seth himself might have sent these storms as a mercy killing.

The mage with the mad dream would not even honor those who die beneath him; he simply had us implant their dead shells into the walls of his tower to reinforce it further. People who inserted a certain amount of such dead began to become sickly themselves and ended up dying as well/ Even that did not force the mage to stop the construction of his tower, for all he had cared; he just got more reinforcement material for the walls of his masterpiece.

I do not know why, but no one had ever tried to rebel against Eppa, I suppose he managed to steal our will with his sorcery. None of this matters, as the tower is completed and all eyes are set on the mighty mage whom mere moments ago was climbing the steps to the top of the world and now is falling like a rock to sand that lies beneath our feet. The world had gone silent, and so did the great mage. As Eppa falls instead of rising, I scream internally, “Where are your stars? Are they far, mage? Are they far?”

The world’s silence is broken by a loud thud once the body of the mage hits the sand; he lies there motionless as blood stains the sands underneath him. All eyes are set on his unmoving body and more thuds soon follow – the mage's walking dead army starts to fall to ground, devoid of the magic that gave it life. Roars of freedom wash through the crowds of slaves who once again are becoming free men. Suddenly the noise stops as all eyes are set once again on the mage who opens his eyes, shocked look on his face, he tries to utter something but the masses of newly freed men refuse to let him muster as much as a single word in fear of him using his sorcery to enslave them once more. The masses, myself included rush to climb on top of the mage’s body and the unmoving shells of his former army just to tear them all to bloody bits.

Nothing is left of their bodies as we tear them limb from limb, skin from flash, flash from bone and devour their carcasses in a display of dominance over them while the wretched mage who had lost his dream screams in agony as we slowly destroy his existence for any all eternities. I tore out a large chunk of the mage’s liver and consumed it with utmost pleasure. I hope the gods do not mind such mannerism from me.

With the mage and his walking dead army nothing but a painful memory we are free to go home, I am free to leave this place and go home. Both my eyes and my heart ache now, because I do not have a home… This is the only place I’ve ever known but this is not a home. Where will I go now? I have nowhere to call home… Why did you have to die Eppa? Why couldn’t you just fly, Eppa? I look at my aching body and at the tower and I see a rainbow decorating the skies – this will be the final thing that I will ever lay my eyes upon as I am tearing them out because of my inability to accept the sight of a world where I have no place to belong in.

Fear not for me, for I will not be damned by my blindness as I can feel Eppa’s sorcery course through my veins now.