The Stygian Crossroads

By: Tilieus Posted on: September 30, 2010

An excerpt from a battered old journal, its pages spattered with a unknown purple dye:

I stared on as the mhun writhed in pain; pinned to a cross like an animal, its wounds feeding a steady drip of blood off his soot stained hands and into the sewers, a feast for the greedy rats below. "For the glory of Apollyon!" was carefully carved into his chest, a beautifully grotesque piece of calligraphy. As I watched he called out to me in erratic and unintelligible shrieks, tears carving lines into the dry blood caking his face. Were these cries for help? Calls for mercy, for death? My stomach turned as I watched this unpitiable form, its shame and weakness bare before all who crossed it, a tiny laughable little man. I could not have cared less about its fate. Weakness is not an inherent quality of any creature, this mangled slave had chosen to be just that. His inaction, his lack of will, permitted others to call him "slave" and treat him in this way. Years of living in Mhaldor, of idolizing those who served the House of Naga had taught me this, and yet even still, some unknown misgiving grew beneath my chest.

I was a the sheltered child of an quiet, but cruel man. My mother, from whom I had inherited my serpentine abilities, died in child birth, leaving my father to raise me himself. From a young age my father took me to work with him in the mines, sending me into unstable crawlspaces the older miners could not fit through. I vividly remember that men who would come to the mines and take our our most precious materials, stealing the gems and metals and leaving us with little left to provide for ourselves. My father would plead to the men to leave us but a few coins. The men, they would not only refuse him but beat him in hopes that he would never ask again. I prayed that the men would beat him until he could no longer move, for if not when we left the mines dark caverns for the dank hole that was our home I would become the beating post. Life continued on as such until a man of the House of Naga had visited the mines. He was already there when we entered the mines that morning clad in tight black garments towering over us, six feet tall with hardened scales all over his body, scales like mine. He told us that he was waiting for someone there and not to draw attention to him the rest of the day. The miners put their heads down and continued on with their day, but I could not help but steal a glace every so often as he waited, crouched behind a rock, hidden almost completely by the shadows of the mines. The men were to come that day to collect their payment; I watched as my father's fist became tighter and tighter awaiting their arrival. Three of them came to the mines that day particularly boisterous and drunkenly singing and toying with the miners along the way. My father rushed to greet them with their money and avoid their punishment, however something strange happened. The men turned and began to address some unseen person, responding to words never spoken. With their backs turned the Naga man quickly dashed behind them and with three clean movements of his blade slit the throats of the first two men and put a blade into the back of the third's neck. I stood awestruck, my father stood frozen with his arm extended, a pouch of gold for the men. The Naga approached my father and took the gold from his hand. "Consider it payment," said the Naga and he left the mines. From that day on I researched as much as I could about the Naga in the hopes that one day I could be like them. I quickly learned of them and learned of the teachings followed by those of Mhaldor, the land the Naga hailed from. They taught me I could choose to be whatever I wanted to be so long as I held my interests above those of others. They taught me that the path to enlightenment was paved with the blood of those who have fallen beneath you. The power of these words led me to one day leave home for Mhaldor and join the ranks of the Naga.

And here I stood, newly ordained in the House of Naga, staring at my father upon a cross the Stygian Crossroads, disturbed by yet another revelation. Looking at this pathetic man on the cross watching him die, I grew angry. This man deserved to die, no doubt, for his weakness, for his insufficiency, but certainly not for the glory of Apollyon. I had loved the independence, the self worth that came with being a Naga, with doing what was best for the individual. The house of Naga, all of the houses, their ideology and worship, blinded them. This creature was crucified not for the betterment of the self, not for self realization, but for another, a God, who demanded glory and praise of those who were weaker. I realized that despite the Naga's bold claims of individualism and self determination, they answered to the whim Apollyon and Mhaldor, not themselves. They belonged on that cross as much as my father did. I left behind my ideology and my weakness at the crossroads with Mhaldor and my father to rot and perish. I would soon leave the House of Naga and begin my true quest for self realization and freedom.