The Hall of Heroes

21. - In the Eyes of the Statue

"One of the his portrayals. Man Há-Tan has many forms."

"S-s-so like, I can now l-l-let you do your thing? You'll t-t-talk to him, right?" Duzz tried to assure herself. Crefar was already engaged in some sort of prayer in a language she could not understand and paid no attention to her. Hearing no answer, she called back, "O-O-Okay." and went on pocketing some of the strange fungi.

In his mind, Crefar tried to reach out to Man Há-Tan. He spoke the words of the old prayers that he had been speaking out loud daily just over a month before, at least from his own point of view. Actually it must have been centuries, if not millenia, in the past.

For a long time, he felt nothing. It was like shouting into the void of a vast abyss. Then, a feeling grew within him. Like an ever so slowly rising deep humm coming from far within the void. It felt as though his calling set some long disused wheels of a machine so old its cogs turned to stone in slow, rickety motion. Crefar was not even sure it was actually Man Há-Tan he had awakened, as the sensation of the connection was so different than his last one. But slowly and heavily, something out there was waking.

On the outside, nothing seemed to happen other than Crefar mumbling his prayer. Though as he was falling deeper and deeper into trance, his voice was getting lower and more mechanical, the words coming out of his mouth lacking any mood or accent. And then suddenly, he started to float. In his crouching position, he hovered up some five feet in the air. Duzz noticed this, but she merely waved her hand, blew raspberries with her mouth and continued sniffing and poking the fungi.

The statue's stone eyes suddenly opened. From within, a pale green light gleamed into the dark dome that filled with its glare. That made even Duzz turn her eyes.

From within the green glow, things started emerging. Huge, towering entities, resting upon the vast deserts and rocky canyons of the old world. Giant statues dotted the land in the distance. The black sky full of stars was turning bright orange towards the line of the horizon and the whirling clouds that crowned the line reflected the orange and turned it into yellows and pinks. Colorful auroras in the distance marked the borderlines between worlds.

Yes, this was Crefar's old world as he knew it.

He walked the land, stepping on the body of a gigantic resting titan. He looked far and wide, taking in the beauty and security of the world filled with magic that crackled in the air like electricity. He looked down at his hands and saw the familiar pale purple gown he used to wear and the deep crimson-colored hands with yellow spiky protrusions that resembled claws more than fingernails. He reached up over his head and touched his horns.

He was in his own body.

But something was starting to happen to the world around him. It was changing. The resting titans were overgrowing with soil and later with trees, forests and raging rivers, until all that remained of them were shapes in the landscape. Roving bands of barbaric humanoids swarmed all over the land and remade the glory of the ancient temples into pitiful tree-made settlements. The old colossal statues crumbled and fell, slowly sinking into the land around. The edges of the worlds flickered and one by one started disappearing, leaving only a dull, homogenous countryside in every direction. And as they did, Crefar felt the magic in the air weakening. He suddenly felt heavy, dull and tired without the magic flowing through him.

The whole world was beginning to fade. The bright colors of the auroras were turning pale and the orange of the sky blended in with the purples and reds of the land below, until everything was the same pale green and there was nothing at all around Crefar. He started falling. But then, he saw that the green glow around him was originating from two large shining points like two green suns right next to each other. He knew what those were.

"Man Há-Tan! My lord!" he shouted. "Tell me! What happened to the world? How can I undo this all? What can I do to make things go back to the way they were?"

One of the two glowing suns started getting brither and brighter, until its light beamed in all directions, spreading like a sky above Crefar's head. He looked about it and started recognizing what it was turning into. A flash here, a flash there, a thunder suddenly roaring from a distance. It came to resemble the vision of the sky he saw in Vietroplach's tower. The vision of the home-world of his race, the Infernal Realm.

And then, the vision faded.

As she gazed into the eyes of the statue, Duzz saw within them a green glow. She wasn't sure what was happening to her, because in neither her nor Tereza's lives, either of them had ever had the experience of a waking dream. She knew it from the old sages of her tribe and Tereza knew it from the wise woman, but neither of them had ever been a part of it.

Suddenly, Duzz appeared in a deep dark forest. She was crouching on a branch high in the crown of a tall tree, as she always did, when she was hunting. There was a crouching forest cat near to her, and she felt the claws of a small bird in her hair. Her hunting companions were with her. She looked down on her body and saw the familiar leather and fur of her old vestments she had made for herself back when she was a baby and grew up remaking them to fit her size. She looked at her hands and saw the familiar green color and shriveled skin on her fingers. She touched her mouth and felt the sharp pointy teeth of her large mouth. She was back in her own body.

She cherished this moment, even though back in her mind she knew it was only a dream, and she put an arrow in her short bow, lying in ambush for any forest creature that would happen to stray too near.

But the moment would not last. She felt the branch underneath her losing its substance and fading into nothingness and she fell hard on her back. And when she got up to look around, she no longer saw a forest. She saw a vast plain and in the distance all around the horizon, a mayhem of war. Raging hordes of humans and dead creatures hit one another and shouts and clamor of armor and swords carried far on the air.

Duzz looked behind her and saw her tribe, all small forest greenskins with large heads and wide mouths full of spiky teeth, running across the plain, fear in their eyes. They were out of their terrain. Their monkey legs were not accustomed to long running. Duzz turned and joined them, panicking suddenly, and went into a full run in the direction the whole group was running - the only patch of wood visible in the distance close to the horizon.

And as she dashed, running madly for her dear life, she suddenly tripped and fell to the ground. 

But she did not land on a surface, she continued falling. Two glowing objects in the distance seemed like the only witnesses of her fall, hovering near her, gazing in a cold green glow. She turned to them and said, "H-h-help me!" Then, suddenly, one of the glowing objects got brighter and brighter until Duzz saw within it a vision of something he did not recognize - it was a towering black monolithic obelisk with runes carved in its surface in an unfamiliar language. She could not place its origin anywhere within hers or Tereza's memories.

Opening her eyes, she saw she was back in the dome, lying on the floor only a few steps away from the fungi. And there, in the darkness of only two torches burning, she saw the statue of Man Há-Tan and sitting in front of it, his eyes turned towards her, blazing strangely yellow, there was Crefar. His cheeks were sparkling with torch light reflected off the tears streaming down his face.