Savages of the Sacred Salvage
You touch the strange shining symbols, for a moment ignoring the fighting, even when a fresh bout of shouting breaks out.
The face of the object is cool and perfectly smooth against your fingers, and at your light touch the markings curl into different symbols. One begins to blink. You don't understand what it's purpose is, and when the leader of the outlaws disappears in one of Hell's blue fires, and the other sorcerous demon-men spread out and break up the last pockets of resistance, sending their bolts of fire at anything that moves, it suddenly no longer matters. You abandon the curious object and scamper for a better hiding spot.
But just when you begin to fear the Hell-bandits will wipe out the whole camp, a dozen blue and gold figures appear in more flashes of light. They're human shaped, but their shiny helms reveal only smooth, featureless faces, At first your breath sticks in your throat and you think you're witnessing the arrival of reinforcements for Hell, but these newcomers begin shouting at your attackers and pointing magic staves at them.
"Hands up!"
"Drop your weapons!"
"Surrender!"
And something like, "Prim-Xen!" are all words you can make out in the moments that follow, and the Hell-bandits, the dead as well as the alive, are soon rounded up by the blue and gold humanoids, and they all vanish together in the otherworldly fires as quickly as they came.
In the months and years to come, the story of the blue and gold saviors is told by the survivors again and again, and the ceremonies of the tribes begin to shift away from the Bright Gods--who accept and work the magic of your offerings, but can't defend themselves, nor anyone else, and grow less and less all the time from the deprivations of the locusts--to these heavenly heroes, dispensing justice upon the forces of Hell. It gives the people hope that there's someone out there looking out for you all.
And that, in the end, your family gets to keep as a memory of Chameek's indirect legacy, whatever else may have happened to him. Obviously it was more than anything he would have ever accomplished on his own.
The face of the object is cool and perfectly smooth against your fingers, and at your light touch the markings curl into different symbols. One begins to blink. You don't understand what it's purpose is, and when the leader of the outlaws disappears in one of Hell's blue fires, and the other sorcerous demon-men spread out and break up the last pockets of resistance, sending their bolts of fire at anything that moves, it suddenly no longer matters. You abandon the curious object and scamper for a better hiding spot.
But just when you begin to fear the Hell-bandits will wipe out the whole camp, a dozen blue and gold figures appear in more flashes of light. They're human shaped, but their shiny helms reveal only smooth, featureless faces, At first your breath sticks in your throat and you think you're witnessing the arrival of reinforcements for Hell, but these newcomers begin shouting at your attackers and pointing magic staves at them.
"Hands up!"
"Drop your weapons!"
"Surrender!"
And something like, "Prim-Xen!" are all words you can make out in the moments that follow, and the Hell-bandits, the dead as well as the alive, are soon rounded up by the blue and gold humanoids, and they all vanish together in the otherworldly fires as quickly as they came.
In the months and years to come, the story of the blue and gold saviors is told by the survivors again and again, and the ceremonies of the tribes begin to shift away from the Bright Gods--who accept and work the magic of your offerings, but can't defend themselves, nor anyone else, and grow less and less all the time from the deprivations of the locusts--to these heavenly heroes, dispensing justice upon the forces of Hell. It gives the people hope that there's someone out there looking out for you all.
And that, in the end, your family gets to keep as a memory of Chameek's indirect legacy, whatever else may have happened to him. Obviously it was more than anything he would have ever accomplished on his own.
