The Echo of Gods

Winner of the Lunar Awards Prompt Quest #2

Update: Winner, winner, chicken dinner! I’m thrilled that The Echo of Gods was chosen as the winning entry for Season 2 of the Lunar Awards.

It’s time for another literary adventure inspired by Prompt Quest, the brainchild of

Brian Reindel 👾⚔️

over at the

Lunar Awards

.

The mission, as before, was to choose a genre, either science fiction or fantasy, and write a short story based on a prompt. While the science fiction prompt was particularly intriguing this time around, fantasy has my heart. And so, I was off to the wordsmith shop to craft a tale based on the following:

Write a fantasy short story that takes place in a subterranean kingdom that has been gifted immortality by mysterious “surface dwellers.”. However, this gift is only available to half of the citizens, and only after the other half are killed. While the elite argue the fate of millions, you discover a secret that would change everything. Do you reveal it, or do you take your chances and hope you’re one of the chosen immortals?

The result: A city of caves is beholden to the Eye above and the Lake below. Then one day, the world of its people is thrown into chaos by the arrival of the Rain, and with it, a song from the Eye on high. The song speaks of sacrifice, and the elders believe the only way through is to comply. But one denizen wonders what might happen if they find another way—not through, but up. Yet, when they reach the Eye, all is not what it seems, and their profound choice will have lasting consequences.

Happy reading!

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My land is dark. My people, benighted.

We live as our ancestors lived: in cold, wet caves, each stacked upon the other in a round edifice of stone that rises far beyond our borders.

Below our interconnected caverns is the Lake. It’s waters lie at the center of our stone circle and keep us clinging to our cliffs. Fall in, and there is no saving you. It is a cruel fate, for life here depends on movement across precarious paths. Slick with slime and the perpetual wet of our world, our narrow byways are open to the great Lake below. Eventually, even the fleetest of foot stumbles.

So instead of facing our end in the Lake below, we turn our faces to the Eye high above. When the Eye is open, a feeble light shines down on us, allowing just enough heat and light to sustain our breadmoss which in turn sustains us.

When the Eye is closed, we huddle in our caves and pray for its return, the soft blue-green throb of algae glowing on our walls providing barely enough light for us to eat our meager suppers.

Lake below. Eye above. We fear them both, but for different reasons.

The Lake swallows. Nothing returns from its dark waters.

The Eye above sleeps. And each time we live in terror that it may not wake again.

This hardscrabble life was the way of things for a long time.

Then the Rain came. And with it, always a song.

When the song first reached our ears, we were struck mad with terror. The sound of it broke through the silence, reverberating off the round walls of our dark city. Many of my kind fell to the Lake, startled so violently from their daily tasks by the sudden song that they lost their footing and, in so doing, lost their lives.

Then came the first drop of Rain. The Eye cried a single red-gold tear which sliced through the darkness and sank below the Lake’s surface, the waves it made reaching nearly to our lowest caves.

We rushed to our elders, our mouths full of catastrophe, of apocalypse. In answer, the elders told us we had not sufficiently honored the Eye. We redoubled our efforts, standing at the brink of our caves and lifting our faces in fervent supplication to its silent gaze.

We willed the unknown entity that looks upon us to understand the strength of our gratitude, the sincerity of our passion. We sang our love and thanks in answer to the song that had rippled through our stagnant world.

The Eye glows with quiet light.

The Eye watches with a gaze ever-bright.

May the Eye return to watch over us again tomorrow.

But the Rain still came.

Every day without fail.

And along with the Rain, the same song, with its sad, haunting melody.

We ran to the elders, still more frightened of what the words foretold.

They asked for patience while they sought to understand what it all might mean for us. And so we waited. Time passed.

Until one day, a youth was traversing an out-of-the-way network of cracks and crevices on his way to harvest the breadmoss that grows near the upper reaches of our city.

From his perch up high, he looked down into the Lake, and in the wan light of the Eye, he noticed that the dark waters were no longer a bottomless abyss. A small island built of the Eye’s red-gold tears was rising out of its depths.

He abandoned his errand and scrambled to alert the elders. Soon, the news had spread across the city. All of us gathered once more at the edge of our caves. But this time, instead of looking up to the Eye, we looked down to the Lake and the incredible island gently glowing in the half-light.

The elders told us this was a sign. They understood now, the meaning of the Song and Rain. The Eye cries for us. It cries for us because of the sacrifice we must make. But in return for this sacrifice, it grants us a golden island, something that we might hold on to. A way out of the abyss.

‘What sacrifice?’ we shouted.

But we already knew in our bones: Half must die.

My people accepted this fate. After all, the red-gold island was a miracle, the Song a prophecy. There was no other explanation and, therefore, no other outcome.

Half must die.

It became a morbid refrain, shouted in our meeting halls, wailed in the common spaces, whispered at the bedsides of babes.

Half must die.

The elders deliberated over how this would be accomplished. They determined it should take place soon, before the red-gold island grew much larger and rendered the Lake’s unfathomable depths shallow.

In three closings of the Eye, the sacrifice would be made. Half of us would take to those unforgiving waters and sink below their surface, never to return. The elders began their preparations, deciding among themselves who would live and who would die.

But as I stood at the cliff edge and looked up to the Eye, singing out my daily prayer, I couldn’t help asking what it all meant: the Song, the Rain, the island in our Lake. These thoughts filled me with a soul-deep kind of dread.

I began to wonder why?

These kind of thoughts were dangerous. For us, to question the ways of our world was blasphemous. Our lives, like our caves, were an open matrix written into the stone cliffs. We, all of us, were interconnected, the hands and heart of the city. The elders were the mind. Their word was law.

Yet as I lay down on the cold stone of my cave floor after the Eye winked closed, I couldn’t help but follow my troublesome thoughts down even more troublesome paths. Why did the Eye demand the death of so many? What was the purpose? To save half of us from a watery death while the rest of us plunged to ours?

Finally, I slept, and when the Eye opened again, I awoke with a new resolve in my heart.

No one ever left the city. We all understood it was perilous; the ways to the upper reaches of our world were unknown. The path might be impassable. Untold monsters or deadly obstacles might block the path. No one knew for sure because no one had dared commit such a violation of our most sacred laws set forth by the elders for our safety and protection.

No one had done it until now.

My feet were quick and sure on the wet paths I knew by heart. I climbed to the highest reaches of our city and beyond, where the breadmoss gave way to a black kind of rot that sucked at my feet. I held my breath as I continued on, the first steps on a journey that was expressly forbidden.

For hours, I climbed, leaving my city far below me. It was dangerous going. Several times I lost my footing, the abyss yawning below me. And once or twice I found myself trapped. With no obvious means forward, I had to use my mind and muscle to forge a way through.

By the time the Eye shut again, I was exhausted, and with no blue-green algae here to light the space around me, I was forced to stop and rest. Tired as I was, my sleep was uneasy; whether from the anticipation of what was ahead or from the dread of what lay behind me, it was impossible to tell.

When I stirred some hours later with the opening of the Eye, I noticed its glow was brighter and the Eye itself larger. This was both startling and encouraging. Now, when I came to the edge of this cave so far from my own to pray, I could see there was only a little further to travel until the steep sides of our world gave way to the unknown.

I struggled on, an insatiable need to know what was beyond the edge of our world driving me forward. At last, I clambered up one final rocky path and found myself on a pockmarked promontory that stretched to both my left and right, forming a great, unbroken circle.

And beyond—

Well, beyond it was breath-taking.

From my vantage point, I could see a vast realm of vibrant greens below and vivid blue above. A soft breath licked at my skin, sending shivers up my spine. And the light! So much light. I stood blinking, awestruck, by the view and the realization that the Eye was more portal than prophet.

Suddenly I heard a gasp, and turning, saw before me a creature so expansive I had to crane my neck to see them and still could only take in parts of the whole.

“Guardian Spirit,” it said, its voice so loud it seemed to shake me to my bones. I stumbled and fell, clapping my hands over my ears.

“Oh, apologies,” they said in a breathier voice I took for a whisper. “I did not mean to startle you.”

I gazed up, my mind reeling. I contemplated returning to the caverns, taking refuge in the familiar dark. But there was something in the monster’s gaze—a look of awe, not malice—that convinced me to stay.

“I have sung for you all these days, Guardian Spirit,” the monster spoke again, keeping its voice low. “I have sung for you and thrown my penny into the well, and finally you have come, just as I knew you would.”

I looked at the monster, its words an impenetrable nest. What was “well?” What was “penny?” And I, a guardian spirit? They must have sensed my confusion or mistook it for anger, because they spoke again, more urgently this time.

“Yes, see, I came here day upon day, hoping to gain your favor, and each day I made my offering, a few words sung and a penny given in the hope that you might appear and safeguard this well and the waters below.”

And then the monster sang with a voice that was surprisingly sweet:

Myself? I’m nothing more than chaff.

To you, water spirit, I’m but a husk.

A bit of nothing against the sky.

Guardian, to you, I promise half.

Throw the coin, I must.

Throw it, or else I die.

And as the monster sang, the words seemed to tumble down into the darkness of my world, their beginnings fading while their ends multiplied:

myself?…chaff, chaff, chaff.

to you…a husk, husk, husk.

a bit…sky, sky, sky.

guardian…half, half, half.

throw I…must, must, must.

throw…die, die, die.

Until, as the words bounced to the very bottom of my world, I could only hear the bit of song I knew so well.

And then the creature withdrew from a fold in the strange garment it wore a bit of the red-gold of the island below. The giant seemed to weigh it briefly, bouncing it up and down in its rough palm before tossing it with practiced ease into the darkness below.

“You see, Spirit,” it said to me, its voice a whisper once more, “every day I have done this for you, the Guardian of the well. And now that you have graced me with your presence, I must deliver on my promise. Half of anything that grows with the help of your water will be dedicated to you. I will ensure your comfort and your care. Guardian, my word is my bond.”

I was too stunned to reply, and mistaking my silence again, this time for acquiescence, the creature lumbered away, leaving me atop my rocky promontory, alone with my thoughts.

I sat thinking for some time, drinking in my surroundings. Until finally, the light-giving eye of this new world slipped away below the place where the green met the blue. But not before the blue shifted from one fantastic new color to another in a display that our algae could never hope to replicate.

The night on the promontory was dark, but not dank. The gentle whisper continued to play on my skin, shushing me to sleep as an invisible chorus thrummed a tender lullaby.

I awoke again as the new world came alive in all its rich and varied textures and hues. The bright Eye bathed everything in its warmth.

The creature returned. It came bearing foodstuffs, fine cloth, and more red-gold Rain.

“For you,” it said, a touch of reverence in its voice.

I wrapped myself in the cloth, luxuriating in its softness. I ate till I felt my body would burst, each mouthful more delightful than the last. And I cuddled the red-gold Rain, catching my reflection in its shiny surface.

Finally, I turned away from the burnished surface of the Rain and walked to the very edge of the promontory. It dropped vertiginously, the rounded sides sweeping downward to the invisible Lake below and its red-gold island. Before the Eye closed tonight, half my people would perish in service to a god that now seemed to be in service to me.

If I left now and threw myself down the slippery cracks and crevices, risked life and limb, I might be able to catch them in time. I might be able to explain what I found on my journey to the Eye. Perhaps they would believe me. Or they might brand me a heretic and toss me over to the abyss along with my brethren.

I gazed at my face again in the red-gold Rain. Within its warm depths, I was lustrous and bright, the pallor of a life lived in the dark erased with one easy glance. A song swam up from the depths of my soul.

Out of many, only I

Through sheer force of will,

May as an honored Spirit live.

My voice, so long used to its plaintive upward cry seemed to race into the blackness below me. I only had to wait a moment for this new world to work its magic on my words.

out…I, I, I

through…will, will, will

may…live, live, live

I will live.

And I tossed the red-gold Rain to the dark.

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