"The Serpent of Fire" by Garon E. Whited

My grandfather was the shaman of our tribe.  He told me the tales of the gods from the times before.  Now I am shaman, my son, and I tell them to you.  Today I tell you of Paladromokolos, the Serpent of Fire.  Listen well, for this is a sacred mystery.

Long ago, the gods did not hide themselves from the sight of men.  For many, many generations, the gods lived among men, teaching us to use fire, to make tools, to work in metal and in crystal.  Yet, these arts we have forgot, for the gods no longer live among us.  We offended against many of them and they fought with each other, some for us, some against us, until they decided that we were not worth the effort.

In the age before this one, our island was vaster than the seas; the islands of our world were once mountaintops, now sunken.  That is all that is left after the gods made war with each other.

One of the reasons the gods chose to fight each other was Herissa, a princess of the ancient days.  Her beauty was like the rising of the sun after a dark and stormy night at sea.  It filled the eyes with pleasure and the heart with wonder.  Some say that she was the child of a god and a mortal mother; I cannot say, but it would explain the wonder her face and form engendered.

Any man would have been pleased to have her, but few dared to offer their suit for her hand.  She was too beautiful, too overwhelming to be approached.  It took courage simply to speak to her, much less to draw close and ask for her favor.  Moreover, she was choosy; courage was merely the first quality a man must have.  He needed wit and charm and a handsome form of his own.  Yet even so, among the best and brightest of all the men in the world, she did not find one that pleased her.

So it was that she was without husband at the end of her twentieth year.  By the custom of the day, any woman who was unwed at the end of her twenty-first year must go to the temples and offer herself as an acolyte; in each temple, the god would accept her or reject her.  If accepted, she would one day become a priestess.  If rejected by them all, she would go to the temple of Sharesh to mourn her life until it passed from her.

Fearing that she would not find in time a husband whom she could love, she visited the temple of Eratos, the Lord of Joys.  There she prayed for a lover, a husband, a worthy mate to give her joy of the world and keep her within it.

The god heard her plea.

Almost all the gods are whimsical at best; they do things for reasons of their own, which we cannot comprehend.  But I think that the god did grant her request in such a fashion as to take revenge upon her.  Yes, revenge.  I think he granted her request to punish her for the broken hearts and shattered joys she had left behind on her path through life.  Whether she deserved it or not, it was the will of a god… I cannot judge; I was not there.

Eratos bent his bow and sent a shaft through the heart of his fellow-god, the Serpent of Fire.  Thus it was that the Serpent of Fire took on human form for the first time and walked among men.  It was a form of surpassing perfection, inhabited by the spirit of a god; seeing him, all knew him for what he was and knelt down before him.

When he came to the temple of Eratos and looked within, the Great Serpent found that which he had sought:  The princess Herissa.  The princess, for her part, was struck dumb with amazement and could but stare at the figure that approached her.

Perhaps she would have gone with him, had he asked.  But he is a god; he did not ask.  He took.  He seized her by the arm and took her with him, away from the temple and away from her city.  After all, who would gainsay a god?  Only another god.

Indeed so; once the Great Serpent had departed, people rose to their feet once more and began to talk excitedly.  But those who loved the princess Herissa went immediately to the temples.  Prayers and offerings rose to the heavens in profusion and many were the pleas that assailed the ears of the gods.  Night and day the prayers went on, loud and clamoring, begging for aid for that most beautiful of princesses.

At last, the gods answered, much vexed at the ceaseless noise.  They sent an emissary to the caves that led down to the netherworld, where Paladromokolos made his home.  The emissary conveyed their request that the princess Herissa be returned to the city of men.

But Paladromokolos was enamored of his new bride and would not let her return.  He dismissed the emissary and kept the woman.

It is not well to defy the gods.  While the prayers of men might move them to generosity, open defiance moves them to anger.  Even from one of their own.

The gods themselves came next to the great caves wherein Paladromokolos dwelled.  There they demanded the princess Herissa.  Paladromokolos refused again.  And the gods did battle for her.

It is said that this was the sinking of the land; this is not so.  Another battle caused that; I will tell you that tale another time.  But this battle was not to be concluded without leaving its mark.  The Great Serpent breathed out a breath of fire upon the gods and tried to rend them with teeth and talons.  Many were wounded by the fierce flames and gouging claws.  But they too were gods and not without power.  They fought for a long time, for no god falls easily, not even before his fellows.  The mountain split in twain and fires boiled up from the caverns below as the battle went on, until the slopes of the peak were red with the fiery blood of the Great Serpent.

At last, the gods beat down their own kin.  He was covered in wounds from head to tail and the glowing ichor of his veins flowed freely.  Yet he would not die; no, he could not.  Slaying a god is a task that even the other gods cannot do.

Instead, they bound him tightly in chains of adamant.  They carried Paladromokolos down to the roots of the world, deep down, among the very foundation-stones.  There they chained him, claw and wing and tail, to the giant pillars that support all that is created.  There is he bound, alone and in darkness, to meditate on the folly of defying the gods.

What of Herissa?

She was rescued from her captor by the very god she had invoked, Eratos.  She was returned to her city and the prayers and supplications to the gods turned to thanksgiving, thus were the gods pleased.  Herissa did not go the temples thereafter, for a god had claimed her as his; whether she was the bride of a god, or a priestess, or both was never clear, but no one would ever even think she must go to the temples.

It was said that she was with child when she returned.  Whether this was the child of the Great Serpent or of her rescuer was never settled, for the babe was born in the fashion and form of men.  It was undeniable that he possessed great power—but that is another tale.

Today, you can still see the truth of these events.  The world still shivers afresh at the struggles of the captive Serpent of Fire.  His chains are hard and strong, but someday he will burst his bonds and seek her that he loves.  When he struggles to free himself, the ichor spilt in battle wells up anew from the riven mountain, glowing as fresh and hot as the day it was shed.  You can go to it and see—a desolate place of dark rock and wasteland that marks the place where fell the Serpent of Fire.