Sins of Our Fathers [Complete]--Editing

Prologue

They prayed to their gods for a solider; a perfect being, whose body could not be marred by the woes of mortality.
Sacrificial blood poured forth from the alter and at each passage of life, the people would raise their voices and dance.
They prayed to their gods for a leader; someone endowed with the very power of creation, one whom could devour their enemies and rule with an iron fist.
The blood of the sacrifices was not enough to gain the attention of the blessed ones.  As the crimson flow fell from the altar, the earth would swallow it up in defiance. The fire's smoke billowed about in the air, stagnant and choking the atmosphere, a sign of the god's refusal of the pungent fumes of the burning offerings. 
Their gods were not listening; they refused to listen. They would not give the people what they wanted. 
Twisting and convulsing they still prayed to their gods, demanding their attention, demanding their answer. 
The stone statues remained still glaring down at the blood-soaked ground refusing to speak.
The people called the priest and he came dressed in the fullness of his religious finery. In their unrest, the people urged him to use the ancient language, to speak to the blessed ones in their own tongue. His vocation prepared him for the rites, but the stubbornness of the gods was unyielding; unnatural for those they served for generations. He did as he had done in the past and showered gold upon the statue's feet, painting their gilded toes with a branch that had been dipped in the sacrificial blood.
"Hear us!"
The statues remained unmoving, but their eyes blazed in the heat of the fire and their faces seemed to contort in the flickering shadows. Again, they refused them.
The priest used the ancient language and called the gods each by their names. All at once, the statues responded, and the idols groaned under the burden of their divine presence. The priest was rocked by the sudden reply, one that instantly entered his mind and wrote itself on his very brain, so that his mouth moved before his sense could return to him.
"Refusal!" The word rolled off his tongue and seemed to fall to the ground in a clump, his voice unlike what it was before. 
"Abomination!" Sweat like blood seemed to poor from the priest's skin and the very stones that made the statues wailed under the pressure of the angry divinities. The gods would have no more of this, they left the stone idols just as suddenly as they had entered them. The priest, emptied of their wraith, crumpled to the ground un-moving. 
The people stopped their praying and dancing and watched, as the statues returned to dead stone, the gold at their feet dulled. 
Their gods had left them. 
Rain began to fall, then. As they stared up at their idols, the water quenched the sacrificial fires and washed the blood from the Altar. 
What were they to do? Their prayers were unanswered, and their gods were gone. Who would send them their warrior?
Then she appeared. 
In the midst of the rain a woman sprang forth from the earth, upchucked by a ground bloated with blood and water. She appeared like a newborn, covered in the remnants of its mother. In Blood and soil was she so covered, panting from her strenuous birth into being. 
She had heard them while in the womb of the earth, she would give them what they desired. 
She raised her hand and at once the flames were ignited, inextinguishable by the rain. 
She spoke the ancient language and behold, a snake emerged from the palm of her hand and wound itself around her arm. The snake's belly was as bloated at the ground, filled with the writhing bodies of her live young.

The woman, who could use the language of the gods, held the body over the inextinguishable fire and addressed the stunned crowd around her. 
"I have come to answer your prayer, and you shall bear witness for all generations what I will do here."
With a knife near the altar, she slit the belly of the snake while it still lived, and the young snakes fell into the flame.
The elders say that the woman spoke again, this time in the ancient language but she made the people's ears able to understand the god's language, and they were amazed. 
"I give you soldiers, the likes of which you have never seen. Since I was born from blood and water, these shall be their nourishment."
The magic of her words flowed into the flame and the burning bodies of the young snakes began to change their shape.
"Since I have molded them in the fire, this will be their weakness, so that they may not rise against you."
The forms twisted and molded, until they began to resemble human figures. The magic of the woman's words grew stronger as she formed her children for the people.
"They will be as those who cannot die as mortals do. Though they might seek it, death will not come to them willingly. They shall walk this earth for as long as the fire that has molded them does."
It seemed that there were seven figures in the fire, all wailing amid the fire, crying out at the stress of the magic forming them. 
"These will be my children; these will be the ones you have chosen to be the best among you. These are the ones you have chosen to serve."
As the last of her magic left her mouth, her body dissipated into the very soil from which she was born. The beings emerged from the fire and the people were amazed at the sight of them. 
This is the story of the ancient snake-men, creatures made by the divine word, nourished by blood and water, formed by the fire of the Earth-woman. 

By the woman they were borne, by the blood they were nourished, to fire they would return.