Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Frog Guts and a Dead Sorceress--The Sorcerer Gaumata


I never expected to have such good luck, but I did. While Rustem was madly seeking and killing xrafstars, and his son was cowering most of the time from his father’s madness, the women were left alone. I dared not peek at them, for certainly the sorceress Anahita was powerful. I sent a minion, a large cockroach, to observe them. I saw through its eyes. I realized that the woman was actually pregnant. She muttered about having to visit a witch, for she felt that she could not carry a child. She feared for her daughter. If she revealed her pregnancy, she would not be allowed to accompany her daughter to the bleeding hut. She felt that the girl was too young to survive the cold and her fear. Anahita was able to make it to the witch’s house, where she drank an herbal concoction meant to expel the child. However, she fell ill—she was dreadfully ill.
Somewhere in Rustem’s head, alarms sounded. He knew something was wrong, so I had to keep him unbalanced. When he heard his daughter scream for help—that her mother was dying, I made him hear the shriek of a demon. I made him see the Blood Demon inside the hut, scraping the walls with its horny claws as it tried to escape. Rustem rushed for a hammer-like tool and used long spikes to nail shut the door of the hut. Then he began to pile wood outside the door for good measure. As Rustem finished the job of stacking the wood against the door, he glanced down and his eye caught a movement near a crack. He saw ants—ants of the sort he had never seen in his waking life. They each carried little bundles in their big black mandibles. The bright, coarse red fur on their backs contrasted sharply with the shiny black of their abdomens. He could see the facets in their eyes as they looked at and away from him, as if in disinterest. Wrenching off both of his sandals, he began to beat frenetically at the horde of ants until his arms could no longer move.  Then he fled to the house. His wife and daughter would be stuck in there, and soon they would die. I was getting back at him for having my ears cut off. Yes! He would feel the pain I felt one-hundredfold!
When the boy next checked on his father, he saw a strange sight. His father was gathering frogs by the stream. He would hold them by their back legs and dash their brains out of the rocks. You see, frogs are among the unfortunate creatures the Magi target as xrafstars. Their guts smeared on the rocks and the grass around the rock was stained red. It was going well.

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