Original Submissions by Delirium of type 'Stories'
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Grandfather Carru and Mock-the-Void
Added on Mar 23, 2007This larger-than-life tale appears to originate from the Sun Runner tribe, and was passed around in Luir's for a while after it was told during a tall-tale contest.
This is the story of Mock-the-Void and his battle with old Grandfather Carru, as it was passed down to me by my father and his mother's father's father's brother's uncle's father's father.
He was out hunting, young Mock-the-Void, with his bow of mekillot rib and a quiver of diamond-tipped arrows, trotting along the trail which would someday become the great North Road. He went past the bluffs; they were still growing, too, they were just a pack of rowdy boulders back then. Bow in hand, he stalked on, past the King of Plants, the Queen of Lizards, past them all, low as a shadow and just as silent, when he saw.. Him.
Big old Grandfather Carru, who he was hunting, for he was big enough to feed his entire tribe for years, and his hide was thick as a baobab tree, speckled with ages of weaponry from failed hunters before. Grandfather Carru's antlers were so big and sharp, they kept poking the northern sky and ripping little holes, some of which you can still see on clear nights.
So Mock-the-Void slunk up, watching in awe as old Grandfather Carru grazed on boulders with his mighty, sharp teeth, taking them up between his powerful jaws and - CRUNCH! He stood in shock as Grandfather Carru crunched the very rockblood from that boulder, and drank it with a brutal twist of his neck, swallowing the remains!
Now Mock-the-Void was brave but smart, so he waited for Grandfather Carru to sleep, watching nearby, watching and waiting. And he waited.. and waited.. and waited...
Until finally, four weeks later, old Grandfather Carru put his head down and stayed still. Thunder rose from that nose, which was big enough for an elf to run through, and Mock-the-Void knew he slept. Mock-the-Void crept up, with his finest diamond-tipped arrow nocked on his mighty mekillot-rib bow, and he aimed...and let fly...and struck true beneath the shoulder, where the heart would be.
There the arrow stuck, for Grandfather Carru's hide was too tough for even Mock-the-Void's arrows, which had killed mekillot at two hundred paces.
So Mock-the-Void crept away and found the King of Plants, who he'd passed on the way. The King owed him a favor, for a favor done in childhood, so now to the King he asked for a seed. The King of Plants had seeds so sharp, so vicious, that they could pierce old Grandfather Carru's hide, and he gave one of those seeds to Mock-the-Void. After a week's labor with the finest wood and the truest cut feathers - from the fiercest verrin ever to fly, of course - tipped with the King's seed, he had his arrow.
He went back to old Grandfather Carru, whose prints a man could stand in. Moving low as any quirri could be, he snuck around to the sleeping beast's face, for he wished to look in his eyes as he let the arrow fly.
There he was, Mock-the-Void, in Grandfather Carru's face - and the old beast woke.
Now my father's mother's father and my father's mother they come into disagreement on this bit... my father's mother says Grandfather Carru winked... and my father's mother's father, he says Grandfather Carru just lowered his head and charged. His foot plowed up the rocks and sent them rolling clear to the east, forming the cliffs that we now know.
Mock-the-Void was brave, if at this point a bit foolish, and let his arrow fly steady and true right into one of old Grandfather Carru's eyes. Now, when you shoot, your feet are still, and still means you don't run.
They say that Mock-the-Void was hit so hard he flew halfway across the known world before he went into the After, and they found his boots in the far valley of Xytrix Za - ten years later.
But!
That arrow was in Grandfather Carru's head. It took him two full weeks to realize he was dead, but all of a sudden he fell with a mighty crash among the scrub and rocks, right beside a vast deep chasm.
Mock-the-Void's cousins and brothers and sisters were watching, and they saw him fall. They crawled in through his nose to cut him apart from the inside, for his hide was still too thick to cut through. And there a vine sprouted, curling up from the arrow in Grandfather Carru's head, and grew, and the King of Plants led his people north and settled along that vast chasm and grew fat off Grandfather Carru's remains.
That is the story of Mock-The-Void and great Grandfather Carru. And it's why carru hate men and elf to this very day.This is the story of Mock-the-Void and his battle with old Grandfather Carru, as it was passed down to me by my father and his mother's father's father's brother's uncle's father's father.
He was out hunting, young Mock-the-Void, with his bow of mekillot rib and a quiver of diamond-tipped...
Continue Reading...Choice, The
Added on Feb 2, 2005A hermit ponders his choice of lifestyle.
When you live like I do, you get used to many things. The intense heat, the burning sun, the stinging sand that manages to get everywhere, no matter how well you cover yourself. The lonely hiss of the wind, never ceasing in its patient efforts to reshape the dunes, to scour the bones of those that have already lost their battle with this unforgiving world.
I am an outcast, even among mutants and freaks. Mages like me have few choices, and none of them are easy.
One is to hide your true nature, to suppress the urges that are a part of your very being. To feel your powers gnawing away at you like rats devouring your body from the inside out, and to know that to release it and ease your pain would be to set foot down a path from which there is no turning back. To know that if you don't, one day you will end up losing control. That day will likely be the one you die. Whether to a frightened mob or to the ever vigilant justice of the templarate, it matters little, for those that wield the awesome and unpredictable forces of nature are never permitted to remain free once they're discovered.
You could choose instead to submit yourself to a lifetime of humiliation, to be collared with the infamous black gem. To be set apart from society, sequestered within the walls of the Magicker's Quarter, at once identified and loathed for the tainted being that you are, no matter where you go. To know that despite the things you have in common with other mages, each one of you is to be trusted less than the common people outside the Quarter's walls - commoners who are afraid to tread the ground you walk on, and would destroy you if they only thought they could.
Nonetheless, considering the alternatives, it's little surprise that many choose the life of being gemmed.
The alternatives? Death, or the desert.
When you live like I do, your day to day existence takes on a certain rhythm; it takes on the motion of the dunes and the shifting sands. You learn to move with the wind, with the sun, with the cooler blessings of dawn and dusk. Water is the ever-present desire in the back of your mind and on the tip of your tongue, more precious than the finest silks. Mortal danger hunts you at every step; whether presented by a ravenous beast, a band of raiders as desperate as you for water and survival, or within the very land itself, it is there. Storms can happen without warning, the mildest of them kicking up a blinding fury of whipping sand and wind that tears at your clothing, rubs your skin raw, and fills your nose and mouth with the gritty taste of desert life.
It's the life I've chosen. Better this, I say, than to be subject to the filth, decay, and corrupt whims of the Black City, or die to the fanatical judgment of the Ivory. Better this than to be used like a toy by a southern noble, to be broken and then discarded. Better this than to be a slave, utterly lacking freedom of choice and will. Better this than to be caged, collared and held back, to live in constant humiliation and fear.
There is a certain fierce pride I take in surviving until the sky takes on its evening purple hue, and living to see the red glory of Suk-Krath blaze above the horizon each morning. There is no better place than the desert to find that place within yourself that shows you just how strong you can be; and also how worthless and small you are compared to its stark, indifferent beauty. It moves my feet forward step by step, and it keeps me struggling to conquer this land that always wins in the end, to control these powers of mine that cannot ever be completely tamed.
Yet when the storms rage for days outside my crude shelter, the supply of precious water in my skin dwindles to a last tiny sip, and my belly grumbles in weak protest at its meager rations of food, I often begin to wonder at the choice I made.
When you live like I do, you get used to many things. The intense heat, the burning sun, the stinging sand that manages to get everywhere, no matter how well you cover yourself. The lonely hiss of the wind, never ceasing in its patient efforts to reshape the dunes, to scour the bones of those...
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