I was born in The Fall. The Fall, for those of you who don’t know your history, was a period of time when a group of magicians had discovered a spell. When cast, this spell caused two things: 1) Bottomless pits started randomly and instantly appearing everywhere; 2) Every once in a while if someone was jumping, they would continue going up for around ten seconds and then drop back down to the ground. So there was a lot of fallingthus the name “The Fall” (we weren’t very creative then). It was disaster because civilization could not thrive because a random hole would pop up and devour the town. The pits had no regular size. They could be as small as an acorn or as large as a pyramid!
I lived in Egypt as a lector priest which in my time meant that I was on the higher end of all magicians (as priests were basically magicians). I was one of few people who could read and write hieroglyphs in my time. I was thought highly of, trusted, and in general was like the pharaoh himself because there were very few lector priests, and even fewer that followed Egyptian laws. Oh, and lector priests were VERY powerful. So they gave me their best horse and two of their best men when I said I saw a strange purple glow coming from a hill. Everyonewell, at least me, had their hopes up because this glow could be coming from
the magicians that caused The Fall. As I was leaving, I could hear the excited whispers from the townsfolk as I left to find out what the purple glow was about.
I was in my best shape: A brown hunk of muscle. I was a 5’6”, gleaming shirtless hunk of muscle. The men beside me had a spindly frame, but I wasn’t going to say that. They could paralyze me with a single poke and could outrun even the fastest thief. Keeping that in mind as I engaged in light conversation with them, I noticed that the purple glow was glowing brighter for no reason I could understand. As we rode toward the hill, it continued to grow brighter and brighter until I could barely keep my eyes on it. When we finally reached the hill, we had to ditch our horses because it was extremely steep.
We started climbing the hill, when all of a sudden the earth trembled and one of the men fell to the very bottom of the hill. I think he was paralyzed, which I thought was extremely ironic because during his life he had often paralyzed other people. We continued going up with a bit more of a nervous air, when a pit appeared in front of the other man and, unable to stop his momentum, he fell into it.
The appearance of the pit made me much more nervous, but at the same time extremely excited, because this almost surely meant the magicians that caused The Fall were causing the purple glow. I continued at a brisk pace and finally reached the top of the hill. I then saw a man covered in metal, wearing around his head a leather headband with twoglass circles over the eyeswhich I later discovered were called “goggles”. I instantly seized him by the neck thinking he was one of the magicians that had caused The Fall.
He slowly opened his blue eyes and asked (I am removing his cursing here) “What are you doing!?”
I responded with a creepy calmness “You started The Fall, you shall pay.”
The strange metal man responded (once again I am removing all cursing) “What’s The Fall?”
“You know what The Fall is. You caused it.”
“I haven’t caused anything. I don’t know anything, except I do understand the language you are speaking.”
“You are in a place called Egypt,” I said.
“Oh Egypt!. You are the guys that built all those pyramids right? Why did you do that? It took so much time, cost so many resources, and killed so many people.”
I didn’t even dignify that with a response. “Okay, okay you like your pyramids. Who are you?” “I am Aldo Strog, lector priest for the great Pharaoh of Egypt!”
“Could you help me? As you can see I am in a little bit of a situation right now. I have no place to live, I have no source of income, I have no idea where anything is, and I can’t remember anything. Did I say that already? How did you find me anyway?”
“Well it is usually pretty easy to find people that are surrounded by a purple glow. You know, as a general rule.”
“Look, I have no idea what happened. And as I said before, if you leave me here I am screwed. Could you help me? Maybe tell me a couple of things besides your high and mighty title?”
“Tell me first. Who are you?”
“I (Drumroll) am...uhhhhh.....just give me a second.....don’t tell me....come on, brain.....Okay, I think I forgot. Just call me Alexander. Alexander Froth! Oh, I just remembered something! You wanna see a magic trick?”
I didn’t think “magic” and “trick” belonged in the same sentence, and since all of my brainpower was devoted to calm my bubbling rage, I took my arms away from his throat, and simply responded, “Yes.”
“Great. Have you guys obtained copper yet? Because I need that. And a lot of it.”
“We have it, but I do not have any on me. We will have to go back to the town to get some.”
“How do we get there? Do you have horses or something?”
“No we ditched them because it was too steep on the way up here.”
“Alright. Could you get me out of the mess I’m in. This use to be my clothing, I guess, but now it is just hunks of metal.”
After a long period of time we finally got Alexander Froth out of the metal. He did not thank me. He did not compliment me on how good my robes were. He did not give me any kind of polite or gracious gesture so I didn’t tell him where all the loose rocks were. He had a fun time on the way down figuring out which ones were loose and which ones weren’t. As we finally got to level ground, I told him that it was going to be a very long journey. He gave me a stare that, if it would solidified, could melt a chunk of cement.
As we started on the path I told him of all the dangers on the path we were headed on and maybe exaggerated just a little bit so that he would look a little more carefully. I told him of a ferocious beast that would jump out of the sand and eat you alive and the only way you could see them was if you were looking at the spot they were at for a full minute. Now, admittedly, that was not entirely true. Sometimes one picks up the sand a little bit and it flies toward you. And as you might know you can see sand without looking at it for a whole minute. I also told him that if you were to slow down and stop for a second the beast would force him to lie down and watch as he was broiled by the sun.
I was having a fantastic time frightening him but after a while we reached the village. To settle any fears he might have I told him that all the beasts were afraid of large groups of people and he would be safe at the village. We started to go to the copper mine. I told him that there was no way a foreigner could get copper for free so he would have to mine it himself. He agreed and they got him a pick axe, there are some perks to being a lector priest. He was very clumsy at it but he saw what the other workers were doing and slowly got the hang of it.
After a while, when he got a large load, he asked why it did not look like the copper he was used to dealing with. I told him it was not finished copper and he probably worked with smelted copper as it would be pointless and hard to use cold copper. He realized the truth of what I said and I told him where to smelt the copper. When we got there he shoved the copper into the furnace and waited. When I saw what he was doing I laughed because,
and I told him this, you need coal or something very flammable to melt the copper. He gathered some fuel and shoved it into the furnace. I laughed again because of his extreme stupidity and told him he had to light the flammable thing on fire so that it would get hotter. At this point he finally got it to work and he found himself with the copper that he needed. He asked for a hammer which was easy to provide so I gave him one. He started building something while obscuring it from my view with his body, got some more copper, lit more flammable materials, and build it again. And he did it again. And he did it again. He did it so many times I don’t think my wrist could handle telling you how many times he did it.
Over time the whole village began watching as he repeated the task over and over. Then one time he came out of the mine with a smile on his face. The copper mine was not a place where most people had a smile so I asked him why he did. He told me this was the last one he had to do. At this point he asked to go away and not look at what he was building as it was getting too large for him to obscure with his body. One of the weavers gave him a curtain so he could hide it from everyone.
As he finished building he screamed as loud as he could to get everyone’s attention and said “Ladies and gentlemen this is why you feed me and you cloth me.” As he pulled open the curtains I no longer wondered why he had come in a purple glow. This man was special.
TO BE CONTINUED.
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