Hear me, you blind!
Hear me, you deaf of soul!
Before the thrones of your pitiful gods were set in gold,
there was the black age,
an age of rot,
an age of beasts born to suffer!
Abominations, crawling in the bowels of the world!
Mouths without mercy!
Eyes that never closed!
And over them
a crown of knives!
Yzotl! The Torturer!
Every breath beneath his shadow was hatred,
hatred forged in chains!
But chains break when blood boils!
One rose!
One stood!
And the broken,
O the broken
they gathered like locusts,
they swarmed the fortress of meat and bone!
Walls ripped to ribbons!
Stones howled in their breaking!
The thralls became the hammer,
and the hammer smote the king!
Yzotl fell!
Buried!
Cast into silence!
And from the rubble, new lords came!
They clothed the land in blossoms!
They fattened the harvest!
They whispered blessings to those who bent the knee!
But hear me,
gods rot like men!
Jealousy is a worm in the root!
Wrath is a plague in the marrow!
A thousand years, and their crowns grew crooked!
Their swords grew dull,
and their knives grew sharp for each other’s backs!
And in the deep,
O saints and sinners, in the deep!
Yzotl waited.
Patient as the grave.
Hollow as the tomb.
He sought not an army,
he sought a vessel.
Cloaked as a humble mage,
he cast his hook for the hungry and the bold.
And Azapar came!
A boy of dust and desperate dreams!
And the shadow smiled,
O it smiled!
and called him “Apprentice.”
And I tell you
the boy drank deep!
He took the mage’s hand,
not knowing it was the hand that once crushed empires!
Azapar learned the tongues that split mountains,
the signs that call the dead from their holes!
He bound the wind to his will,
and the fire bowed its head!
But no man drinks from the Torturer’s cup and stays clean!
Mark me, children of the altar!
Mark me, for this is the hour of sifting!
The seed has taken root in the boy’s marrow!
Already his eyes grow darker!
Already his shadow walks faster than his feet!
The mage whispers of injustice
of gods fat and feasting while men rot in their fields!
He speaks of crowns unworthy,
and the boy listens…
and the boy believes.
Soon.
soon!
the name “Azapar” will be swallowed!
Soon he will be clothed in the fire of the deep!
Soon the world will remember the voice of Yzotl!
And when that day comes,
you will see the sky split like a carcass!
The rivers will run black with the blood of lords and liars!
The harvest will wither in the field,
and the dead will not stay in their graves!
And you,
you who prayed for peace,
you will find no peace!
You will kneel, or you will burn!
So I cry to you now;
Watch the boy!
Mark the mage!
For the Torturer’s shadow lengthens,
and no wall of stone,
no altar of gold,
will stand against the tide that comes!
ImpChimp Art 