OF HOW THE WORLD WAS LOST

The witch watched the scene with a mixture of delight and contempt. The barbarians of that nameless tribe were celebrating her presence in the village with an unbridled bacchanal of drums, bonfires, dances and entertainments of all kinds.

She felt pleased by all that display of lust and adoration towards her person, but at the same time she also felt disgusted by those people so servile and willing to grovel in such a way. Strong warriors, proud amazons and impassive young women cowered in awe at the mere sight of her. It was flattering, but also humiliating.

He would tear them all apart with a simple wave of his hand. She would summon horrible forces from the underworld to eradicate that village from the desolate landscape. She was sure they would not even try to defend themselves, such was the dread she caused them. She could walk among them and slit their throats with her own steely nails, without them doing anything but falling to their knees to make her job easier.

– Now I will tell you the story of how the gods took the world from you and rained fire from the heavens!

– Cursed heavens! – replied the throats of his audience in unison.

She laughed like a pile of gravel rolling down a slab of slate and continued.

– The world belonged to human men and women, who lived a gifted existence of abundance, pleasure and wealth. Great empires stretched everywhere and covered every territory to beyond the horizon. Mankind was unrivaled, conquered all creatures and feared nothing beneath the earth, above it or… in the sky.

A murmur of disbelief rippled through the assembled tribe. No one was missing, from the elders to the youngest children, including the chieftain of that ragtag mob. Their brains could not imagine half of what the witch was telling them about lost worlds and their wonders, but from the emphasis and passion she put into her story they got the idea that it had been a glorious time they would never know in their brutal existence. She herself did not fully understand the stories recorded in her caves nor the more obscure visions of Cragmora, in which she spoke of “technology” and “machines.” But her faith was strong and she knew what to tell and what to hold when talking to those human pawns.

– Until one day mankind decided to conquer the skies too!

A howl of fury and amazement ran through the ranks of the barbarians, who gesticulated like lost children at this madness.

– The gods, jealous of their power and furious at such audacity, brought their ships back to the ground and cursed the world with a rain of fire, poison and plagues that lasted a whole generation. The power of men decayed, withered and died because of the vengeance of the gods.

– Cursed heavens! – roared again the spectators who were completely devoted to the narration.

– Those who were not slaughtered fled, hid from that carnage in the bowels of the earth, where they felt safe and found refuge for many, many years. They were few in number, but the earth took them in and taught them some of its powers to outwit death and, in time, they emerged again to rebuild the world. You are their proud heirs and have the task of restoring them to their former glory, guided by the powers of the Coven and the help of the creatures of the underground who abhor the heavens as much as you do.

– Some treacherous humans fled to fortresses far from divine punishment and named themselves gods – the woman continued narrating with great theatricality -, abandoning the rest to their fate. Those mythical castles float between the kingdoms of men and gods, expelled from the devastated earth but with their ascent to the stars forever denied.

The witch, enchanted by the effect of her words, noticed that that particular one puzzled the locals, who kicked the ground and grimaced in ignorance.

– The stars are the abode of the gods, places of light and splendor that shone in the nights of old, when man had not yet been cursed by the envy of the heavens. Today we are forbidden even to see them, replaced by that reddish eye that wanders over our heads without ever resting, spying and watching in the name of the gods so that you may never again rise proud!

Weapons gleamed in the light of the dying sun they now glared at with renewed fury and pounded the ground, as men and women roared and thrust at each other with an unusual violence that they suddenly wanted to project against a tangible enemy. Hairy arms rose in the air and waved mute curses at the firmament in the form of clenched fists.

– Cursed heavens! – the tribal barbarians chanted for the third time. It was the sign that the story was coming to an end and they all fell to their knees and adopted postures of submission and gratitude before the witch who protected them with her powers.

The chieftain gave a push to one of the boys gathered there, his own son, so that he would approach the sinister skeletal woman covered in threadbare dark cloths.

She frowned and her already nonexistent lips became a slit on her wrinkled face. The boy who had been standing discreetly beside her, unibrowed, stooped and black-toothed, noticed her ill-temper and approached her. Stepping slightly into her field of vision, he unfastened his tunic to show her his naked hairless body.

He was a child she had barely seen ten winters. His father may have envisioned a glorious destiny for him as a champion of his tribe, but the witch’s visit and her demand that he hand over the swain to her put an end to any fantasies he had. He did so without complaint. He might even have felt honored. Now that child belonged to her to do as she wished, to mold him to her liking, to raise him up or destroy him. The word of a witch was law.

Disgusted even more by the crude offer of that imbecile eager to please his new mistress, she slapped his face away from her with a backhanded hand and watched him cower in terror as he dressed hastly back.

Men.

What she had seen in her trances. What she knew that race had done to the world. How many times? That was unknown to her. At least twice. It was all written on the walls of their caves. The accounts of their visions, the things that had been revealed to them about the Earth that Was. The fire from the sky that swept everything away, the descent of mankind to the underground and the resurgence of ancient dark powers.

That same story was told by the barbarians in their dances, depicting with crude pantomimes and contortions the destruction of an ancestor people they had never known except from the legends handed down by the witches.

Her deep musings continued as she contemplated the sweating bodies of half-naked men and women performing their mystical ritual dances with her undaunted face like a mask illuminated by the bonfires.

Those brute primates were like cockroaches. They always came through, always managed to survive even in the most lethal environments. They should crush them all, but Cragmora, the Coven’s prima inter pares, had no such plan in mind. She played with them. They… amused her. But there were rumors, stories that Cragmora had had a revelation about how the human race would once again thrive and become supreme masters of that world once more. Reason enough to exterminate them now. What was their matron up to?

The dances came to an end and the hoarse instrument that had been resounding throughout the village fell silent at last. The barbarians prostrated themselves before her and chanted litanies in guttural voices.

Licking her parched lips with a pointed tongue, the witch searched with her eyes for her new servant who quickly approached with a lowered gaze. With a fast gesture she tore off his tunic and greedily rubbed his nubile flesh with scrawny hands.

The boy shrank involuntarily at that icy touch and tensed, for he had never seen a witch before, let alone from so close. Perhaps it was the stern, wasted face, the skeletal arms stretched out in his direction, or the deformities and mutations that could be guessed from beneath the tattered robes she wore. The witch’s other hand again violently crossed his face and the boy let out a scream.

This time the cruel old woman’s laughter sounded like a femur splintering against the rocks. The tribe was still chanting their tunes in postures of humiliation, including the father of her new pet. His hand closed over the boy’s wrist like the stocks of a prison. Dragging him behind him, she led him to his assigned hut and the door closed behind them silently.

Cragmora may have been amused by those monkeys, but she was going to bring them to heel if only one by one.