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The Fool
The sun rose, its fiery rays illuminating Xetalath-Uxil, and the city bubbled under its glare. Clouds of steam condensed in great swells from mud-covered roads, from murky waterways, from Black Marsh itself, mixing in with the sweet and oily scents of the city before rising ever higher. On the heights of the xanmeers, those dark, monstrous ziggurats of carved stone that towered over the haze like a leviathan surfacing from the depths, frenzied drudges beat wild rhythms on heavy gongs, sending their bronzed cries echoing through the stony streets. Hawkers emerged to peddle their daily wares, clothes woven with beads and feathers of all colors of the rainbow, fine daggers of flint and stone, as sharp and hard as the rock they were hewn from, spiced meats and liquors from all over the Marsh. Hunters appeared from the deep jungle to sell their catch, be it crocodile haunch, kagouti rib, or wamasu heart. The morning chant, and the day, would soon begin proper.
Xetalath-Uxil. A city of unparalleled glory…
And unbridled madness.
Jun-mei woke with a start, then looked around, mildly nonplussed. This was not the room he had gone to bed in. Instead of a muddy roof, he found himself greeted by the warm rays of the sun burning in the cloudless sky above. He tried to get up, but found that he could not.
How odd. It appeared that he had been tied down to a stone pedestal. Ordinarily, he might have been alarmed, what with the rough ropes that had been drawn across his chest, wrists and ankles, but the stone did feel nice and cool under him, and the sun’s warmth was making him particularly lazy. Shifting his tail to a more comfortable position, he turned his head as far as he could to the right to orient himself. His eyes widened – he had never been this high up before! The city of Xetalath-Uxil lay before him, in all its splendor and glory. Its grand and twisting forests of Hist trees, its glorious and ancient xanmeers, its innumerable inhabitants like tiny specks before his eyes…
Jun-mei spent some time watching the city before slowly coming to the realization that the intricate stone carvings on the floor beneath him were in fact a duplicate of Xetalath-Uxil itself. He turned to his left to verify this, and saw that this was indeed the case. Look! Those little indents over there demarcated the market district, and that shallow area in the distance had to represent the hatching pools. Why, it was very accurate, right down to flowing channels of stone flecked with brown that had to represent the maze of canals that crisscrossed the city. “Nice, flowing channels,” he smiled to himself appreciatively, remembering idyllic days spent swimming in said canals, going out towards the rivers to catch pricklefish whenever he felt hungry. And, as it so happened, he was beginning to feel a little peckish right there and then…
“It is time.” A rasping voice interrupted his daydreams. “Let us begin.”
A shadow fell over Jun-mei. He looked up to see an intense, green-eyed Argonian, dressed in ceremonial robes and clutching a staff of Hist amber staring back at him. A Pachk-Seelith!
“Hail, high priest!” he spoke cheerily in Jel. “I seem to be in bit of a bind here. Would you mind helping a fellow Saxhleel out?” Jun-mei flexed his bonds to demonstrate his immobility, briefly wondering whether or not he should have addressed the high priest in such a casual manner. No sooner did he grasp the thought, however, did it melt away like mist in the morning sun. “As nice and warm as it is on this table, I would hate to be stuck here all day,” he continued.
His thoughts were strangely scattered, but he was starting to remember something of the night before. A dark room, not his own. His hands, cupping a worn bowl of clay. The sweet milky-white substance that he’d drunk from it. There was something else, too… but the gongs were starting again, even louder than before. Jun-mei looked up and saw the high priest’s mouth moving in what sounded like a prayer, though he could not hear the exact words. Agrea tho nor? Foro otands eed? For his part, he lay on the pedestal passively, a slight smile on his face.
This went on for some time. Jun-mei waited patiently for the high priest to finish; whatever he was doing was clearly important, and it would do no good to interrupt. A small xous landed near his snout. Feeling playful, the Argonian sneezed to shoo it away.
Abruptly, the gongs stopped. Silence filled the air, thick and heavy; Jun-mei felt an odd prickling sensation at the back of his neck. From beneath his robes the high priest produced a dagger and raised it towards the sun, examining it carefully. Jun-mei took the chance to examine it too. It looked very sharp. Someone could get hurt.
“Hey!” he said. “Be careful with that!” The high priest looked down at him with a strange expression on his face.
Oh. Jun-mei suddenly realized how silly he was being. Why would he need to warn a high priest? Of course they would know how to use a dagger! It's not as if they were some newly-born hatchling.
Somehow, this thought struck him as being incredibly funny. He began to giggle.
He was still giggling like an idiot when the Pachk-Seelith carved out his heart and ate it.
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Comments
Get inspiration to write, then write.
So far it's been not very forthcoming.
I'm guessing there's a TES version of milk of the poppy.