The origins of Ohun
At the beginning of time before death there was only life, however, as it is with all living things death is inevitable. Also as it is with all things, there is always the potential to be the first. The first to blink, the first to laugh, the first to die. The first to die in this case was a small insignificant and weak creature no more than one cell floating amongst the stars named Æi.
Because of Æi there was now something that had to be dealt with for all living things. The power that willed Æi into existence now saw that in creating life they had forgotten how to handle what happened when life was no longer there. It was then that Æi was given a new form, a new purpose, and all the qualities that make a god, a god. Æi’s new purpose was to oversee the dead in a world that paralleled the mortal world but would hold no life. The gateway to the world of the dead would be located deep underground in a planet named Terravium which had both the fortune, and misfortune of being the exact center of the universe.
Æi spent many eons watching the cycle of life from birth to last breath in every creature, in every corner, and crevice, of the universe. Not knowing anything else Æi was never bored or unsatisfied with his role. He could not take nor give life but was the bearer of death’s burden nonetheless. At no particular moment in time Æi found himself, as he was every so often, at the gates of his kingdom in the center of Terravium awaiting to take the next batch of souls across the void into eternity. Above the surface of Terravium Æi saw something that until now he had no interest in. A girl no more than fourteen years of age lay in a field sleeping under the summer sun.
Æi left the souls to congregate amongst themselves for a few moments longer than usual in the sub terrain while he went to Terravium’s surface to have a closer look at the sleeping creature. Hours passed and as the sun went down, and the world cooled, the girl awakened to the sight of a large black creature with legs and horns of a goat, but face and torso of a human. She screamed but was quickly quieted by the creature’s massive hand that covered not only her mouth, but her entire head. The creature was Æi of course and in no more than the time it takes one to blink he assumed the form of a male of the sleeping girls species.
Before she could get in a word edgewise Æi asked the girl to stay with him in the underworld by his side for eternity and in return she would never die. Not knowing what eternity really meant or that Æi did not actually control life or death she agreed. Without waiting a moment more Æi and with his new queen Severen ascended the void into the Kingdom of the dead.
As fortune had it, Æi was able to keep his promise of eternal life to Severen. A property of the fruit of the dead when eaten by a mortal stopped the aging process until it had left their bodies. Since there is no other food in the Kingdom of the dead Severen never aged another second older by Æi’s side. No more than a year passed when Severen gave birth to Æi’s first son Nu. Nu grew to look mostly human like his mother except for a pair of black horns that grew from his skull. As the first-born son Nu was given the great responsibility of guide to the souls at the gates of Æi’s kingdom beneath the surface of Terravium. Every morning Nu would leave his home to greet the waiting souls, and every night he would escort them across the void into eternity. Because Nu was Severen’s first child the time she could not spend with him saddened her immensely. Æi saw this and gave Severen permission to leave his side and cross the void once every new moons with Nu and spend the day with him on Terravium while they awaited the traveling souls, so long as she not eat the food on the surface of the planet. Severen, delighted at the time she was now able to spend with her son thanked Æi and from that day on every 36 days when there were no moons she crossed the void with Nu and awaited the universes released souls. Seventeen years after the visits began another son was born into the house of Æi and he was named Lo. Lo did not have any of Æi’s traits aside from brut strength and intelligence and if one did not know who he was Lo passed as just another human like his mother.
The days that Nu and Severen spent together on Terravium gave time for Lo and Æi to do as they pleased in the Kingdom of the dead. In time because of the time alone together Lo became Æi’s favorite son. Lo was now privileged to all the knowledge his father had learned in the course of eternity and learned from him well the habits of men and beast alike. Since Nu in all the years he had been alive showed no interest in inheriting the Kingdom of the dead and Lo was the favored son it was decided that upon Lo’s 25th year he should take over his fathers reign.
As it were, in the 24th year of Lo’s life, an inns keep from the Planet Terravium passed in his sleep and his soul made its short trip to the gates of eternity. Upon arriving at the throne of Æi the man’s soul would not budge to pay it’s respects to the God of the underworld. The court of souls Æi kept as advisors became irate and demanded the inns keeps soul be confined to the bottom most regions of the kingdom. The inns keeps soul begged to have court with Æi in private. Æi agreed only because it was a change from the general tedium of his every day affairs and he and the soul of the inns keep sought privacy in one of the yet to be occupied sectors of the kingdom. The inns keeps soul begged for mercy and apologized to Æi for his rudeness. It was only because the inns keep had not expected to see Æi at the throne of the underworld but Nu instead. Puzzled by this assumption Æi asked the soul why it had thought Nu to be the King of the underworld. The inns keep then began to weave the history of Severen and Nu’s outings on Terravium for Æi. At first everything was as it should be, Severen would come once every new moons cycle and Nu would escort her to familiar locations in her old home. As time passed though their days were spent not outside in the markets or amongst nature but in the Inn the soul had once kept. Severen had always told the inns keep not to tell anyone of her excursions with the God of the dead to the Planets surface or else he would take the inn keep’s soul prematurely. It was apparent that they were lovers and the inns keep only assumed that the once a month ritual between the queen and who she said to be the king of the dead was just that and nothing more. He then told Æi of how a child had also been conceived between the two and that they had named him Lo, but that he has never seen the child.
Enraged at his wife’s infidelity and the dishonor She and his son brought upon his kingdom Æi, no sooner than returning to his throne, banished Severen and her two children from the land of the Dead forever. On the surface of Terravium they would age and die but never would they be allowed to cross the void. Their souls once dead would eternally float through the stars in the cold of the cosmos. Because Æi had no control over death itself or when death occurred he could not have known that as soon as the three now banished royals reached the surface of Terravium, two would perish instantly. Deprived of his throne and the father he loved unconditionally, Lo no sooner breathed his first breath of the Terravium atmosphere than he killed both his Mother and Brother. Severen with the ageless body of a fourteen year old was easy to kill but Nu proved to be a little more challenging. In the end Lo tore from Nu’s head his horns and used one to stab Nu in his groin and the other his heart. When Nu was surely dead Lo took again from Nu the long black horns and fastened them to a helm that was never taken off from that day forward in the public of Terravium. On his mother Lo found three whole fruits from the tree that bore the food of the dead. With the thousands of seeds inside the fruit he could bind awaiting souls who had not yet crossed the void to the Mortal world to do his bidding as an army of undead. It was Lo’s wish to take over, for his father, all of the countries of Terravium as an offer to return to the only place he knew as home. The mortal world, a world Æi had long left behind but never forgot, for the throne to the Kingdom of the dead.
Over the next two years the Horned Sovereign camped near the gates of the kingdom of the dead being careful not to let his father, who again had to escort the souls across the void himself, see his banished son. From the souls The Horned Sovereign picked the soldiers who had died in battle and the smiths, forgers, and skills men to help in constructing the ultimate army. An army of souls already dead and who could not be killed again. When all but ten seeds were used for binding the souls of the new army to the mortal world were used, the Horned Sovereign and his army of undead made their way to the secluded nestle of Terravium called Inculta.
Inculta is home to a tropic lusher than anywhere else on Terravium. More than half of the species living in the tropic are native only to Inculta and cannot be found anywhere else on the planet Terravium. A dense poisoned forest surrounds the pristine tropics and surrounding the forests a vast desert so large that neither man nor beast without flight would survive its brutality. The main inhabitants of Inculta were the tribe of eean shooyl. Because of their seclusion in their native home and a string of generations that bore mainly males they found one day that there were no longer any women to mate with and continue their species. Fortune found the tribe of eean shoolyl amongst a flock of tingmiaq passing through on their way to warmer waters for the mating season. The Tingmaiaqs are essentially a race of animals who are bipeds like humans but poses no marrow in their bones making them light enough for their white and grey iridescent feathers growing from small wings on their shoulder blades to carry them away on flight. Only one Male Tingmaiq is born every hundred or so years making most flocks female only. Like birds the Tingmaiq have beaks and eyes on the side of their heads, small down feathers ranging from pure white to pale orange cover the rest of their body from head to heel save pubic areas and a patch of bald from chest to face but they otherwise look human.
Seeing it as an opportunity to save their race the Eean Shooyl captured the resting flock and mated with them forcibly to bear offspring. The tingmiaq were held in the center of a maze of Heiba tree roots and tied down securely until they laid their eggs in the captivity. Eventually the Tingmiaq did bear eggs not to their own kind but a hybrid of both species. Having enough genetic variety to go around for ages the last of the true eean shooyl slaughtered the tingmiaq and feasted on their flesh for ninety two days until no trace of them were left. Their bones were fired until there were nothing but ashes and then buried at the very center of the densest part of the tropics. From the ashes grew a tree that bore tear shaped fruit more poisonous than anything else on Terravium. The history of the eean shooyl’s deeds was never recorded and the stories were never passed on to the new generation of hybrids. The new Eean Shoolyl stayed relatively secluded for a few more centuries until the day the Horned Sovereign arrived, Inculta was to be his first target and in fifty-four days the tropics had been taken and none of the eean shooyl remained alive. Their feathers and bones were faceted into magnificent weapons by the Horned Sovereign’s army of undead. The most luminous of the feathers went to make the horned Sovereign a flowing robe and also to adorn a single scythe that he would one day pass on to his heir.
The Horned Sovereign, in honor of the only one he knew to be his real father, renamed Inculta to Æi. From the last breath of the Eean Shoolyl onward, the Horned Sovereign and his army of undead toured the mortal world on a mission to take all of the lands in hopes of offering them to Lord Æi as a bid to lift the Horned Sovereign’s banishment and return to his home to take his place as the rightful heir to the underworld and as also as a god.
Word of the horned king’s arrival spread across Terravium and with it brought fear and panic to the nations. Each country and nation began gearing up for their eventual encounter with the Horned Sovereign and secretly each country and kingdom wished that the empire to meet the Horned Sovereign previously was able to defeat him so that they would not have to face that battle. Some countries were prepared adequately yet fell and others were inadequately prepared and surrendered. It was in a cowardly country that the Horned Sovereign took wed.
Numia, a wealthy country nestled in a sultry latitude on the Mion Sea was the fifth country to fall under the Tyranny of the Horned Sovereign’s undead army. Not inclined to fight at all, the citizens of Numia were unprepared for battle and surrendered after two days. There had never been a war in Numia because their main export was a narcotic flower that only women born in that region could harvest. The demand was so great for the drug that no nation ever betrayed their trust for fear of being cut off. The kingdom had no need for weapons or soldiers and in the end their arrogance in their immunity was their downfall. In order to continue smoking and harvesting the petals of the narcotic flower the King of Numia made a deal with the Horned Sovereign. His two daughters Olm and Yum in exchange to be left alone until Numia was the last city to be taken by the Horned Sovereign’s army. The addiction of the narcotic to the king was so great that he would do anything to be able to keep using.
The Horned Sovereign was inclined to refuse the King’s offer but changed his mind when brought face to face with Olm and Yum. Identical in every respect they were the pinnacle of beauty. Cold as he should be to the wants and wanes of man the Horned Sovereign, being part man himself, could not resist their charm and agreed to leave Numia for the last in return for Olm and Yum’s hands in marriage.
No more than ten months went by when Olm gave birth to a daughter named Ohun. Small and unassuming Ohun was blessed with her father’s brut strength and when held by her aunt Yum for the first time crushed Yum’s left index finger under the grip of her tiny hand leaving Yum forever lame in that hand. As Ohun aged trait that had skipped her father appeared from her head. Two jet-black horns emerged from her cranium at age five and continued to grow until she was thirteen. Ohun was trained in the art of battle from the time she could stand by members of the army of undead and sometimes her father as well by the time she was seventeen she was one of the fiercest fighters and devastators in the Horned Sovereign’s war. It was decreed that Olm and Ohun should follow the Horned Sovereign from battle to battle in a carriage carried on the backs of the undead and that when it was possible Ohun should fight by her fathers side.
Time went on and battles grew longer and longer as countries of Terravium became more and more prepared to meet with the Horned Sovereigns war. It was en route to the kingdom of Psypher that Olm met a soldier of Ringoken on her way to a neighboring kingdom with a message from her Government. Olm inquired as to the soldiers name and learned that it was Oun. Olm then asked if Oun was hungry or thirsty and would perhaps join her in a meal. Her daughter was away fighting and Olm was lonely and in need of good company. Not knowing that the Olm or her daughter were the immediate family of the Horned Sovereign Oun obliged, not being able to resist the chance to flirt with such obvious foreign royalty. Servants of Olm who had willingly followed the Horned Soverign in war made a tent for Olm and her guest. They were not undead and did not cause any concern in Oun because of that fact. The night moved on and Oun and Olm dined on a feast of foods from across the land and enjoyed a conversation about travels and the world. At an interval between courses Olm excused herself from the table for a short while and made her way to the cooks fire outside the tent.
From her sleeve Olm produced a flower alike to the narcotic one of her home but not quite the same. The flower she had was also from Numia but it was a rarer breed of flora. Like it’s sibling narcotic the flower had effects on the Psyche of both man and beast and sent either into a euphoric frenzy. In the short time conversing with Oun, Olm had decided that this was a good night for fun. Never one for men in the first place Olm asked the cook to crush up the piston of the flower with his mortar and pestle and mix it in with Oun’s next course. The outcome of the deed was one night of lover’s zeal under the stars en route to Phypher. In the morning Oun found herself beneath a Heiba tree alone and with the worst headache. One of the after effects of the flower she had consumed was a blackout memory of the time spent intoxicated. Feeling terrible, but knowing her duty nonetheless, Oun continued her journey to deliver a message from Ringoken in the opposite direction of Psypher.
Olm finally reached the oracle at Phypher to join her husband and daughter in the early afternoon. To Olm’s surprise the Horned Sovereign met her carriage at the gates of the oracle Ohun was at his side. One of the servants loyal only to the Horned Sovereign had gone ahead in the night before and informed the Sovereign of Olm’s infidelity earlier that morning. Enraged at the premeditated betrayal of his trust the Horned Sovereign denounced his wife and daughter from blood ties to his throne and cast them out onto the sea to navigate their own way in life from then on. Yum was then summoned from Æi to join the Horned Sovereign at his side in battle.
A ship was prepared for Olm and Ohun in the harbor of Phypher. Although broken hearted the Sovereign was not heartless and had the ship stocked with provisions for a year but no crew. In the morning Olm and Ohun were to board the ship and sail to wherever they wanted so long as it was nowhere near the Horned Sovereign. In the night before she was to be banished to the seas Ohun, using skills she had learned from a locksmith soul in the undead army, picked the lock to her cell underneath the oracle and sought her fathers room out. It was at midnight that she found it at the top of the oracle with its massive stone arch windows facing the fires raging below in the city of Phypher.
Ohun begged her father not to be banished. She pleaded that her mother’s infidelity was not her fault and she had been fighting by her father’s side at the time. Remembering his own banishment and how unfair it had seemed then too the Horned Sovereign made a deal with Ohun. If Ohun could kill both her mother and the soldier involved in the affair then he would give Ohun what was rightfully hers by blood, the mortal world to rule over by law while her grandfather rules over it as god. In their last moments together the Horned Sovereign passed onto Ohun the first weapon that was made by his army of undead to wage the war. A sentimental but deadly scythe whose blade protrudes from the last skull of the Eean Shoolyl to have perished at the hands of the Horned Sovereign. In the handle of the scythe a small glass orb rests between gnarled wood from a Heiba tree. In the orb are ten tiny seeds from the fruit of the dead float in the blood from the incestual lovers of years gone past. Sharp and precise is the weapon but also more somber than any weapon forged by mortal hands the scythe when used to end a life binds the soul of the newly perished to the mortal world, never to know peace in the kingdom of the dead. Ten little seeds make sure of that.
At once Ohun departs from her father and returns to the catacombs and dungeon of the Oracle. In one swift blow she pierces her mother’s heart with the sharpened blade and then decapitates her. With her mother out of the way Ohun’s only goal is to find out who the soldier was that ended her blood right reign to the mortal world.
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