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Sometimes you find redemption for your sins... and sometimes you burn for them.
-Musings of the Historian
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SADAVIR WAS AS EXCITED as I was when he heard about the books and he agreed that he would read them and tell me about them as he read.
This plan ended up being very good in theory and downright lousy in practice. As Sadavir started reading, he soon became so totally engrossed in what he was reading that he would hardly even break to eat.
Any questions I asked were answered with dark silence as Sadavir brooded over what he had read. This went on for days as book after book left the boxes in Sadavir’s hands. He would read from the morning until it became too dark to see in the night.
I could see that the men would have wanted to get more nuts since their supply was running low and their wives had returned to serving up pasty soup made from tubers. None would disturb him, however, as his mood was dark and troubled .
It was a common sight during those days to see a man's gaze wander up into the trees longingly. His eyes would then wander to Sadavir, he might even start forward to ask about a harvest. Usually, by then one of his companions with a bandaged arm or head would pull him back. There was a certain privilege associated with being a master of violence .
Only a week had passed, however, before Sadavir broke his trance-like study. After a quick foray into the trees after nuts, he asked to talk to me. We walked a distance into the forest before he finally got his thoughts together enough to speak .
“We were their slaves. Or they were ours, I’m not quite sure what I should be calling myself at the moment.”
“For the moment, let’s not call you anything, just tell me what you have learned.”
Sadavir spent the next several hours telling me the history of the Creators and Destroyers. He had to stop often as emotions overcame him or he became distracted and wandered off on tangents.
I claim a historian’s right at this point to tell the story of these peoples in my own words: In the beginning, there had been one great source of magic, one man. The history that described the man told it as a myth, as all histories eventually become. Nothing was said about how he gained his fantastic powers, but the reports of them were impressive, even for myths.
The man was a noble sorcerer who wielded almost god-like powers. The tale told of mountains moved, seas called up from the depths of the earth, even volcanic eruptions stopped mid-explosion by the man’s uttered command.
His name was Amel.
Amel brought all the people together under a gentle command. For all his impressive powers, he allowed none to worship him or pay him tribute. He said his powers and knowledge were the result of fate, not divinity.
He used his power to serve the people. Everywhere he went, the farms prospered, the wells ran sweet, and disease was cured. It seemed that there was nothing outside his power. In a single generation, the people of the land grew from starvation to prosperity, from ignominy to nobility, with Amel as their example.
The day came that Amel decided that his powers needed to be shared with the people. While there were many guesses after the fact, no one ever truly knew what his intentions were.
Perhaps he was growing old and wanted the people to be taken care of.
Perhaps he thought they were ready.
Perhaps he didn’t know it would kill him.
Whatever his reasoning may have been, most commentators agreed on one thing: He was wrong.
Amel brought all the people together and told them that it was important to work together. He said he would show them how important it was. So saying, he dropped one knee to the ground and held his hand out in front of him, palm open.
As he slowly drew his hand to a fist, light gathered within his hand, shimmering and writhing like a living thing. The myth states that the more the light grew in his hand, the more he seemed to age in front of their very eyes.
As his fist finally clenched tight, the light had engulfed his entire arm. Just as the light became too intense for any man to look directly on it, Amel thrust his hand to the earth, the light exploding outward like a wave, the ground itself rippling under its weight. It washed over the people in an instant, knocking them all to the ground.
When they regained their feet, all they saw was that Amel had died. The man who had raised them all to dignity lay face down on the cobblestones, his right arm charred and smoking.
The mourning went on for months. Some men gave up hope entirely and died of starvation and despair on Amel’s tomb. It wasn’t until nearly a year later that the first child was born with a beautiful Stone delivered at the same moment. It quickly became obvious that all new babies were being born with the incredible gems. Some were clear, some were opaque, all were beautiful.
It was another twenty years before anyone noticed that those with clear Stones were incredible craftsmen, their Stones would glow when they were truly engrossed in their work. In a dawning realization, people realized that Amel had given the people a great gift. At least, he had given it to some.
Almost immediately, those with clear Stones started to band together to share experiences, to talk about new techniques or simply exult over their good fortune.
If history has shown us anything, it is that, when one group combines in status above another group, the other group will combine as well. I suspect it is some kind of innate survival technique when the human animal feels it is threatened.
Their first real war was primal. They were a people who hadn’t yet learned sophistication in war. The worst they had known was personal feuds. So now, with an entire people divided against each other in fear and hatred, they learned their first lesson hard: War is hell.
They battered at each other with rocks and clubs. Farm tools and household implements became instruments in the hands of mobs to crush and cut one another down. When nothing was handy, they would use their bare hands to batter and squeeze the life out of each other.
Amel’s people had lost their innocence, perhaps their souls. Although the people were evenly split as far as numbers, the war was far from even. Those with the opaque Stones showed an incredible intelligence and innovation that gave them an edge in every battle. Ambushes, fortifications, and new weapons quickly took a heavy toll on the craftsmen, who knew nothing but to charge straight ahead.
As the atrocities on both sides rose in frequency and depravity, fear grew in the craftsmen and hatred grew in those with solid Stones. Once the tide of war had firmly shifted, the end was swift and complete.
The craftsmen were enslaved, forced to use their talents to serve the others, who began to call themselves by a new name: Creators.
Even as they took the name to celebrate their inventiveness and ingenuity, it only betrayed their deep envy of their slaves, who had been favored with Amel’s Gift. Try and train as they might, they would never come close to the amazing skill of those with the clear Stones.
Though built upon slavery, it might have still been a golden age for the people. The brilliant plans and inventions of the new Creators, carried into being by the skilled hands of their slaves, would have catapulted both peoples into an incredible period of technology and prosperity. After all, even a slave benefits when his master rises.
Unfortunately, that isn’t how people work. It wasn’t long before the Creators found reasons to fight amongst themselves. Ideological and religious differences soon had them back into civil war. This time the Creators had skilled hands at their disposal to make weapons, fortifications, and engines of war .
The days of rocks and clubs were over. Each faction competed against the other not only on the battlefield but also in the workshop as they ordered slaves to construct better and better means to destroy their enemies.
Elaborate strategies were carried out by trained armies, territories were taken and retaken, and thousands of people died. More battlefields, more fortresses, thousands more died. Ever new weapons, ever new strategies, and thousands more died.
The war lasted for generations. The original reasons were forgotten, replaced by causes of vengeance and dominance. All the while, the slaves grew in number while the masters killed themselves into a minority. Still, the Creators never saw the danger, they only saw larger workforces to help them carry out their schemes.
Finally, one scheme came out that was brilliant in its simplicity and incredible in its scope.
A wall.
One side started building it to seal off the other from valuable mines. The other side saw an opportunity to cut off the opposition from their lumber supply. What followed was an ongoing battle more bizarre than any anyone had ever seen. The two armies fought for years at the running edge of the wall. As new sections of the wall were completed, they would simply move their camps and start again.
Neither side harmed the slaves of the other as they both worked on the wall. While it may seem insane, it actually may have been the first sane thing either side had done in decades. At some point, the leaders must have seen the wall for what it was: a chance for peace. If the people could not dwell together in peace, they would simply dwell apart. The wall would enforce their cease-fire .
Still, while reason may have pushed the peaceful building of the wall, it was not sufficient to stop the fighting. Emotions ran too strong, too many scores to settle. So the violence continued as the massive wall crept its way across the land.
It would be hard to gain adequate perspective on what happened next. In another story, I saw a mirror that showed a person their full life in an instant. Unfiltered, unbiased, it showed a man his true self in a way that couldn’t be justified or even defended against. It was a weapon of psychological destruction. Men faced with a realization of that magnitude would crumple like tissue paper under a waterfall.
This is a little like what happened to these Creators. There was a moment when they began to see a glimmer of hope in their madness. That glimmer was the completion of the wall. The violence would end and the people would have an opportunity to live as human beings.
Then the faint glimmer of hope turned to a blood-soaked despair.
The Creators had given no more thought to their slaves than a blacksmith gives to his hammer. They used them as tools, no longer seeing them as human. Unfortunately, their slaves had not forgotten their own humanity. They had not forgotten their anger at being placed in chains.
They also had seen an opportunity in the wall, a chance for a new life. They saw a chance for revenge.
The wall reached the cliffs that formed a natural barrier to the land. It had started at the sea, where hundreds of slaves were sacrificed to the ravenous sea creatures to build a foundation in the shallows. It ended now in a split in the land that no climber had ever come close to conquering.
The last thing to be built was a gate. It showed the growing hope of the people, a thought that one day they might even come back together. The fighting amongst the two factions had all but stopped. Only a few lackluster battles still flickered like the dying coals of a fire.
When the last stroke finished the gate, the killing started for real. The slaves had worked out a system, simple but effective. When the completion ceremony was announced, the slaves turned on their masters. It was unanimous and devastating.
The armies were slaughtered as the hordes of workers washed over them. They still lacked the finesse and strategy of the Creators, but it no longer mattered. The wars had dwindled the population until the Creators were outnumbered seven to one. Not a single soldier was left alive. Every commander, general, and strategist was methodically crushed under workers’ hammers.
The fate of the rest of the civilization was left up to those they had ruled over. Each slave got to decide the fate of their masters. Cruel masters were killed along with their entire families. Those who were kinder were forced through the gate to the far side as slaves streamed back over.
In just a couple days, the entire race had divided itself like oil and water. They found themselves staring at one another through the gate. The survivors of the holocaust, mostly women clutching frightened children, found themselves with their backs to burning towns and cities, left flaming by the fleeing slaves.
They gravitated to the gate, staring helplessly at the slaves that had massacred their men and now held their fates in their hands. Whether they were looking for mercy, a second chance, or even an explanation, we’ll never know. All that is recorded was the statement of the leader of the slaves: “You have enslaved us, crushed us, all so that you could butcher each other. You are Destroyers. We are the Creators now.”
And the gate swung shut.