This story takes place in a fictional civilization with its own language and counting system. Please imagine you are reading a translation into modern English which took a lot of creative liberty with the source material, delivering you the original's spirit if not its syntax or structure.
"Ke'Aulara, eater of the sun. Pursuer! Destroyer! World renewer! Heed this call and close the ring, spare your wrath from the land of the bleeding."
The darkness around me was alive with shades and shapes, writhing purple on black like a garden beneath a lake beneath the moon. I could feel my sweat mingling with the ritual oil streaking my skin. Feel my heart's slow pounding through my hands in the shaking of the cotton-swathed sticks I held.
I gripped them tighter, now, pink fire coiling around a shadowy impulse of my body as I stretched my arms as far up as they could go.
Then let them drop to the drum beneath me, and my eyes flew open.
THOUM.
The sun blazed above me in splendor, saturating my temple's white stone with liquid light. I saw my arms rising slowly through shimmering air, but could feel nothing of my naked body but my floating head and a nest of insects and serpents where its stomach had been. How strong had they made the ritual tea?
THOUM.
My arms had come down to strike the drum again, seemingly of their own volition. Fascinating.
A scream rent my drumbeat's fading echoes, followed by waves of hooting and howling to put the jungle's cacophony to shame. I squinted past the sunlight, past the endless riot of color in my City's streets and out to the sea of trees engulfing us. They seemed to rush forward in my addled vision to swallow the farms, tenements, and palaces of the City's three layers, to bring us within earshot of their hidden animal fury. Yet I knew these screams were coming from men.
The temple's pinnacle was packed with priests and wealthy farmers bedecked in decorated pelts, all dancing around in ochre-streaked animal masks and tearing at their skin from an excess of zeal. Their abandon was not total, however, as each dancer retained enough sense to give wide berth to the golden poles of my ritual enclosure. Cowards.
THOUM THOUM.
A hulking man in a broadleaf cape and baboon mask lifted his own drum in return, answering me with a rattle of higher pitched strikes. Aku'le--identity betrayed by his gross musculature and twisted leg--my trusted knife bearer through a decade of sacrifice.
He stood before a rag-bound crate, bits of blanket constantly twitching at the furtive movements of its inhabitants. Wretches captured in some blood raid. Thoughtful. Perhaps the Goddess would still be peckish when she'd finished with me.
The mob screamed louder, clashing sticks and shaking out beaded hair to add to the discord. I tried to retreat from the noise and pain, but could not. They'd left no slack in the ropes binding me to my drum.
Ke'a'ke'a'le'he'we!
Aku'le's voice rode the cacophony and changed its course, the crowd now joining him in chanting my royal name at me from all directions.
"Greatest of our kings!"
How
very
kind of him.
"Lord of gold, brother to the Hawk, our master in peace and war!"
After seasons upon seasons of backbiting and complaints.
"Slayer of the Water People, the Tree People, even of the Sky People!
Always an axe at my back, surrounded by snobbish priests forbidden to speak a word of praise to their monarch.
"Shield of our city! Feeder of people! Greatest builder to have ever lived!"
And the day I finally,
finally
was to learn that these wild, beautiful people had appreciated all the blood I'd spilled for them--
"Heart of our hearts, king above all kings who shines upon us as a second sun! Ke'Aulara, claim this sun in place of the other, and accept our dearest sacrifice to the honor and glory...
--was the day they killed me.
"Of the Dawn--Eater--
SERPENT!"
Silence. Dark. I was back in that purple tinged blackness, awareness of my body's outline fraying beneath the hot rush of adrenaline and medicine tea. I dropped the sticks with a muted clatter, pressing fingers to my eyelids and stretching them up until it seemed they'd come clear of my face.
Nothing. Was I blind?
No. My eyes
were
open, and some light was reaching them.
An orb of fainter darkness hung above the dark, haloed in gentle red which trickled down to illuminate my surroundings. I stared for a few dumb moments. A total solar eclipse. In the instant after Aku'le's pronouncement, the moon had appeared before the sun.
I brought my hands back to my eyes-- barely perceptible softenings of the deeper dark. There should be more light than this, even in an eclipse. I glanced back up at the sun ring, watching it waver and fray in the distance.
There was something in front of it. Something massive, moving in a fluid curve, almost like the body of some gargantuan sn--
"You're the sacrifice."
The voice went through me like a spear. It had so many layers, deep vibrations at the bottom building to an almost playful peak. As if a group of chanters was speaking to me from one mouth. Chantresses. It was unmistakably female.
When had I fallen to my knees?
"What mudflat did they pull you from, then? A Goddess has returned. Has fortune left my People with nothing but bony wretches for her welcoming feast?"
Each word scraped through my body, leaving muscles slack and lips limp as in a dream. I could see the currents and emotions of her voice as colors creeping across my vision. Crimson anger, mossy disappointment and an orchid tinge of... petulance? Surely not.
"One pale, little wretch. It can't even speak!"
Warmth had crept into her voice, but it was the reptilian warmth of a lizard basking in the sun. She was enjoying my helplessness. I felt a contraction in my chest, blood weakly surging to my numb lips. Pride, even in the face of death.
"King... I am king."
