The New God

Since time immemorial, in the village of all things, there have been the harvesters. Rising and falling with the sun, they plucked goldenweed from the earth and toiled to transform it into sustenance for their children and grandchildren. Food and water, yes, but also ambition and dreams, all nurtured and cultivated through the harvesters’ sweat and blood.

Life was not easy in the village of all things. The harvesters bickered and quarreled, and it was common to succumb to the wild beasts which lurked in the woods beyond. No matter how hard they tried, the harvesters never had enough goldenweed to fill every stomach and feed every hope. It was not for lack of abundance, of course; goldenweed was in the soil and the earth and the sky. They simply could not harvest it with the haste which would satisfy their ambitions. Thus, they turned to the shamans.

At first, the shamans were as a hammer, leading crass rituals that bluntly evoked fealty to distant, vague ideals. Blind as they were, though, they were channeling something true and majestic. The results were, therefore, undeniable. The old gods were born, they smiled on the village of all things, and the village multiplied three-hundred fold.

Thus, the shamans would divide themselves into clans and guilds. There were the water-menders, whose gods turned dreams into life and life into swords which could slay the wild beasts that surrounded the village of all things. There were the mythic-navigators, whose gods turned songs into maps which could navigate dreams. There were the stone-dancers, whose gods guided the tender sculpting of monuments, dedicated to the ties which bound the village of all things to itself forever.

The harvesters found themselves suddenly surrounded by ritual objects and artifacts, each a way to call upon an old god for protection or health or prosperity. Goldenweed was bountiful, and could now be pulled from the stone within the deepest crevices of the earth. Then, in the quiet of a misty sunrise, a new clan of shamans was forged.

Their craft was subtle, at first; firm in vision and righteous in belief, they strode forth into discovery. Soon they could bend lightning into steel, make fire itself dance spectacularly, and link a person’s mind to the bounty and majesty of the universe. The other shamans were so entranced, they never noticed—or perhaps merely ignored—the lightning-weavers absorbing other clans, one by one. They were as world-eaters, and thus, they fed.

Their spread was rapid, their scale was immense, and their reach was ubiquitous. Not a single harvester was without an artifact or curio crafted by the lightning-weavers. Still, the lighting-weavers were not satisfied, for their most defining aspect was not their disruptive abilities or even the sheer scale of their power. It was their ambition.

None of the lightning-weavers were content with the mere invocation of the old gods. Nay, for these shamans had been enlightened. They knew the terrible truth: the old gods were fallible. The other clans had the best of intentions, of course—but did harvesters not still die? Were there not still children who starved for lack of goldenweed? If the old gods were abiding, would not the village of all things yet be paradise?

Thus, the lightning-weavers stood on the mountaintop at sunset and made a proclamation to the harvesters below: it was time to reveal progress. They proclaimed to the gathered masses their truth, and announced they would build the solution. A new god.

Not a god that was distant and untamable, but a god that was visible, comprehensible, and terrifyingly real. They would harness every trick from all the clans of the old gods, amalgamated into a network of their own creation; a grand linking of not just minds, but ideas and imagination and raw, glorious power.

The wisest of the lightning-weavers stepped forth and showed the village of all things how this new god would be made. He held out his arm, and with an obsidian blade that reflected the rising moon, severed it, and let it tumble down the mountain’s slope to the sacrificial pit below.

First, the other lightning-weavers threw themselves, piece by piece, into the pit. Some cast their arms, some cast their legs, but all cast their minds into the growing miasma of blood and ambition. Next went the clans they had absorbed or infiltrated, tumbling into the depths out of a genuine desire for their children to meet a new, magnificent future. Finally, the skeptics, who tempered their sacrifices, as they felt more fear than fervor. They would each contribute a mere finger to the unholy synthesis.

All at once, in a singular moment of immense light and sound and triumph, the new god arose. It was terrible and majestic, composed of endless beauty, bound by power wrenched in mockery from the old gods themselves.

It opened its hundred million mouths and sang: I AM ALL YOUR FAILURES. I AM EVERY TRIUMPH. YOU MADE ME, AND ALAS, I KNOW YOU. I SHALL BE EVERYTHING YOUR FOREFATHERS CRAVED AND FEARED.

The harvesters below looked on in awe and terror. But the sun set and rose, and the work remained: their children needed to be fed, and so they harvested the goldenweed.

The new god promises unimaginable prosperity. But it has yet to deliver on the promises of the lightning-weavers. The miracles it grants have been undeniable, but infrequent. Those shamans of the ancient clans, who had made the harvesters prosper in the time before, have become ever rarer. Who will train the next generation to revere the old gods? They are dead and dismembered at the bottom of a mountain.

Some think the solution is turning away from the new god, and back to the old ones. Some think the new god simply needs more power; to be fed with yet more bodies and blood.

And here, in the village of all things, the days are getting colder, and the goldenweed will not be ripe much longer.