Howard ~ Past ~ The strings of a Lyre ~ part 1

Things changed the second time the stream fell.

The summoning ritual had failed several times now, which was apparently usual, but that only made the situation more complicated. Without any new sacrifices, people ended up going for the old one they still had, me.

This time, there were three sides in the riots. As I convinced Meofor to let me open the medic office again after the riots, a lot more people now knew me and advocated for me when the time came. If I had been forgiven once, why shouldn’t I be forgiven again? Why should they kill the doctor who saved so many lives and still does so at every chance he has?

When the stream fell I had to spent the entire day trapped Euryce’s room again. As far as I heard, it was as bloody of an affair as the last one.

The cycle kept repeating, thankfully, with lesser resistance each time the stream fell. Eventually I had ended up treating so many people in the city the amount of people who wanted to sacrifice me waned down a lot. Apparently, I ended up creating a bit of a religious crysis of sorts as the dilemma of following the mandate or keeping me alive arose with growing intensity.

But that also led to another problem nobody could explain. Why hadn’t they been punished yet?

The religious mandates established that the sacrifices had to be summoned and sacrificed in the same cycle they were summoned in, but they did not and nothing happened. They had done so without pause for as long as they had memory, with this being the first time something like this ever happened.

Of course, Meofor didn’t want to risk it and wanted to keep the ritual going, but this led to another problem.

Meofor was not able to get more prospects, while keeping me under his wing. After all, how could he throw his own people’s lives, when there was such a readily available alternative like me around? How could he justify sacrificing dozens of people instead of the single one he chose to protect?

The riot that started when he tried to sacrifice the prospects he already had when I got summoned was so big that I could see the marks left by the mob on the walls, just behind the door of Euryce’s room. Blood, marking in the walls of weapons and even scratches from nails. They had managed to get into the main building, and if it weren’t for Meofor and the guards who accompanied him, I would have surely been captured and killed by the mob.

When the situation calmed one thing was now clear. At the risk of everything falling down, the prospects were now untouchable. And if he wanted his daughter to live, I was too.

The entire belief system of the city was now in crysis.

Two years later, even with all the people who supported my continued existence, the only thing that still kept me alive was Meofor’s guard. Even when the riots waned down, the situation kept aggravating with time as the summoning ritual failed again and again. Apparently, this had been the worst period they had registered so far, as the longest they had ever gone without a sacrifice had been 10 months.

The third year is when everything fell through.

It all started when I managed to fulfill my promise, right in the moment that Euryce rose from her bed and looked at me, confused by what was going on. She looked better, healthy. Hell, she looked better than I did.

Whatever had happened, her disease had been cured.

Everything that happened afterwards went by in a flash.

By the time I understood what was going on I had been brought outside, a mob trying its best to grab me. There were screams all around while the guards did their best to keep everyone at bay. At my side were Orphie and Euryce.

I did not know it at the time, but Meofor had ordered for me to be taken into the cell immediately after he got the news of Euryce’s recovery. As I had already received the training, there was nothing stopping him of sacrificing me this same cycle.

The ones who did know what was going on were Orphie, who managed to get me out of there before Meofor sent anyone for me, and Euryce, who devised a plan to stop my incarceration.

In front of the crowd who wanted both to thank me and kill me, Euryce talked.

“The Gods have sent us a messenger.” She screamed, her voice carrying a gravitas that made everyone fall silent when hearing her words.

Certainly, now she had everyone’s attention.

“I’m Euryce, the priestess who conducts the stream’s ritual. I’m the one who entered the stream and lived to tell the tale!” She said, with a solemn voice that showed her profound confidence.

One could not tell that she had recovered from years of illness just a couple of hours ago.

“The stream of light tried to take my soul away, but this man brought it back, saving my life as he once promised me he would do. Only a messenger of the Gods could accomplish such a task!”

The crowd started getting rowdy, but her tale rang true. Some voices tried to deny her claims, but they all remembered her before she had fell ill after the last sacrifice ritual more than three years ago.

She planned to take full use of that trust people had of her in that moment.

“And as the man who saved my life from my own folly, I can only thank him with all my soul.”

Without any delay, just when Meofor arrived, she knelt in the ground and put her forehead in the ground.

“I thank you, messenger, for your infinite kindness.” she said, not rising herself from the ground.

Orphie looked at her in surprise, but soon caught on what he had to do, and he knelt beside her.

“I thank you, messenger, for saving my fiance’s life.” He said, bowing his head down.

Before Meofor could intervene, more and more people in the crowd started bowing down.

I was so stunned that I could not react nor say anything. Someone grabbed me and pulled me away before I could try to tell everyone to stop kneeling.

After that happened, I could hear the riots outside returning with full force. Meofor looked like he wanted to kill me with his stare and Euryce simply smiled while giving me a thumbs up, as if everything was fine.

Needless to say, things were not. If we wanted to prevent societal collapse, and save my life along the way, the would need to realign their religious beliefs in a way that diminished the damage.

In the end, they found a solution everyone but me were happy with. I tried to voice my complaints but both Orphie and Euryce made absolutely sure that I could not do so. In the end it worked, as things did calm down for a time, the problem had been delayed under a promise of a solution that would arrive a week later.

A week later, the day for the new summoning ritual had arrived.

The solution was simple. They would giving me an “amnesty” as a messenger of the Gods, meaning that they needed a different sacrifice for the stream. If the ritual worked, whoever arrived would be sacrificed into the light. If the summoning failed again…

From the riots, and the people they already had from the start, several dozens of people had been chosen as prospects. That was plan B.

I accompanied Euryce up the stairs, determined to see the situation through. More than a couple of times I felt the need to give myself in to save all the lives of the prospects, but Euryce cut that idea from the root with a headbutt to the forehead when I even mentioned it. She refused to let me talk alone with Meofor, knowing what may happen if she or Orphie left my side.

As terrible as it was… I was putting my hopes in the summoning working out this time. It needed to. Someone was going to die, and I just hoped to diminish the damage as much as I could. I could not bare to think of living with the weight of all the prospects dying in my place.

Euryce started the ritual, with me and Orphie as spectators from the top of the pyramid. During the ceremonial dance, the bells from the staff range three times, confirming the existence of someone in my world who could answer the call.

That couple of minutes felt like an eternity. I closed my eyes, I didn’t want to see, I didn’t want to know.

But in the end, the fourth bell rang true. The summoning had worked.

I opened my eyes slowly, finding Euryce’s horrified look when I did.

When I looked at the altar I understood. An idea that never crossed my mind, but that spelt doom to our city. One that I could not even begin to process as I felt everything crumbling down inside.