Our Little Gods 2: GOLDRAC, Of the Old Gods.

Chapter 25.

It was a splendid late summer day on the plateau above the Valley of the Four Glaciers. It was so fine in fact that the heavy tarp flaps of the entrance to the council tent had remained open to let in the sun and the warm air. Telegona, the representative of Sardis to the gathering of allies was speaking, addressing himself to the rows of generals, lords and ladies and at least one emperor:

"Almost nine hundred years ago, before the birth of the Undying even, a boy was born to a cheese-monger, her husband was the shepherd which herd she used the milk of for her cheese. She named the boy Jör, after her elder brother that had left to find his fortune in the Morning Lands. The mother, the father, and the little boy lived just outside the city-state of Pestinistere. Situated at the feet of the lower Goldrac range. it had been founded at the time of the first Altar War in the Domnviik realms. At first, it was mainly refugees running away from the brutality of the conflict and seeking the Thirteenth tribe. As the conflict spread to the neighboring realms what had been a Domn settlement saw more and more men-folk arrive, seeking the peace of the isolated community.  When the great Domnviik tribes of the upper lands finally settled the conflict and started reconstructing no one wondered where the missings had gone. Most were presumed dead and the Ukko and the Muatha had welcomed the others under their laws and their protection. The remote settlement prospered on its own almost becoming the stuff legends are made of. Unfortunately for its people one of them discovered gold in the rock cliffs of Goldrac just above the city. And so it is that Pestinistere changed from being prosperous through industry, to being wealthy from gold trading. The population increased and it appeared on the maps in cartographers' rooms in the cities of the Morning Lands as well as on market places. The Halls of Sardis bought land and built a counter there. Due to the dual nature of the people of the city, the sensing of Uithil was difficult and there often were perturbations due to Tralaïs' activities. But the magus felt the boy from a very early age. It was almost as if Uithil coiled itself around him. After careful observations, the master magus of the counter declared a trial in aptitude but unlike the ancient realms, Pestinistere had no laws allowing such trials and the parents refused at first, so the trials were conducted from a distance, covertly and should not have been conclusive. Yet these were.

 The wealth of the city-state triggered the gold lust of the Muathan king who took his armies across the arid plains to seize the city and add it to his realm. His case was that would Pestinistere had remained an open city he would have kept his armies away from it but over the last fifty years walls had been built around it and the shift from open to walled city made the rich city a threat or so he claimed.

Ukko and Ziom allied to prevent the success of Muatha and the three armies met under the walls of the city. The hamlet where Jör's parents had lived was ravaged by rampaging soldiers. The child was almost 11 then. Was it the trauma of seeing his parents be butchered in front of his eyes or what the soldiers did to him afterward? We do not know. The Magus found him and brought him to us, two days of hard riding to Humala.  What we do know is that as soon as we showed him how to tap into Uithil he vanished from the Halls. We tracked him down back to his city. He was wandering the ruins of the hamlet where he had been born. When we reached him he asked why, why did the soldiers did what they did here. The only reply that came to the mind of our tracker was "because the city closed its gate". This otherwise circumstantial sentence became exactly that, a sentence, of death. Jör as we watched powerless to stop him, eradicated the city of Pestinistere and it's one hundred and thirty-nine thousand inhabitants. Sardis, for the first time in its history, emptied itself of every single magus. We magicked ourselves in the smoking and bleeding ruins of Pestinistere, only to witness Jör, naked, dancing in streams of blood, like a demented child. He called us his friends and rejoiced at our coming, he was under the impression that we had only helped him so that he would be able to avenge the death of his family and all his suffering. He called upon us to join in and help him destroy the soldiers of the armies lingering in the plain unable to understand what had befallen the city they had been besieging. We stroke as one. Five thousand magi spelling together to bind the boy and make him sleep. We merely managed to confuse him. Until nightfall, we barely held him where he was. Incoherent, mumbling about friends and soldiers, aborted dance moves and bouts of sobbing, Jör was unfocused and unable to act but the longer it lasted the weaker we became and the more suspicious he was. He started attacking us, he would single out one magus that, so he claimed, looked like one of the soldiers and he would obliterate him. We did not know what to do so we called for all and any of our brothers' magi that could, to come and join us in our fight. We were hoping to crush him under sheer numbers.