The thing you have to understand, is that, at the time, walking away from the old faiths seemed like the perfectly logical approach.
The warnings from our elders, which became ever more emphatic as more and more of us left the faith, seemed like the paranoid rantings of deluded fanatics, unable to face the reality that they had dedicated their lives to ridiculous fantasies. In days past it may have been easier to keep those born into the sect isolated from the secular world, to have kept doubt from entering the closed circle. But in a world of TikTok and Twitter, a world with a never-ending flow of information just on the other side of ubiquitous internet access, the firewalls of our insular community failed.
I know it won’t mean much to you who are able to read this in this quiet moment before the gathering storm, but I want you to understand, we didn’t know what would happen. Truly, we didn’t.
I was born into a strange little sect of no recognized denomination. We did not have a name to designate our believers as distinct from the other religions great and small, but this was not an act of humility, we simply did not deign to recognize those who did not understand the truth of the world, those who could not see what it took to maintain the fragile peace in which mankind had clawed its way to a place of relative security and prosperity.
We were raised to believe that we were the inheritors of a sacred trust, the carriers of a holy flame. We tended to the old ways, and ensured the peace of the ancient gods whose very names had been forgotten. We placated them with praise and rituals that were older than writing. The rites we inherited were old when Rome was young; when the first warlords of the Nile though to call themselves Pharoah we had yet practiced our ceremonies for untold generations.
I cannot will my hands to write the name of the God my sect was responsible for worshipping, at whose altar we sacrificed- they refuse to do it. I do not know if this is some subconscious remnant of a faith, long-believed to have been banished, that is unable to countenance the blasphemy, or if this is an early sign that He is even now awake, and slowly rousing out of a long slumber to unleash the horrible anger that awaits us.
What I can say is that the God we worshipped was the river that runs through this city. We believed we remembered what those who lived in this city no longer knew. That the river, that all great rivers, were Gods: strong, brown Gods- sullen, untamed and intractable. All mankind at one point recognized this, but the knowledge became lost.
When we first crawled down from the trees to hide and cower together on the plains, we knew the truth: the world was full of Gods, but they did not care for us. The Gods our ancestors recognized were in the winds, the mountains, the rain and the rivers, and were not loving. These Gods did not hold humans in especially high regard, but paid us the same care that they did all living things-that is to say none at all. These Gods, we used to know, could not be trusted. But they could be understood, could be propriated with the right sacrifices, the right careful attention.
In time, we humans grew confident in our abilities, our feeble knowledge, began to view the river not as a god to be appeased, but a problem to be confronted by builders of bridges, a tool to be used by conveyors of commerce. The river, however, remained. Waiting, watching and waiting ever, implacable. Keeping his seasons and rages, destroyer, reminder of what men choose to forget.
Our sect was able to keep his rage at bay, for a time. The people of this city commuted to work over the slow, roiling waters. They walked the trails that followed its bends, worked, and played, and loved, and lived, never knowing that did so in the shadow of a sleeping monster.
When my father finally convinced me to return for one of the rituals I did so not out of reawoken religious conviction, but because of the naked fear in his face. But it was too late.
There had been too few of us, and the sacrifices and rites had been neglected for too long. The offering went badly.
In the tunnels below where for generations we had performed our services, there was blood and screams, and the implacable dark rising waters. I know now what is gathering in the quiet below. What horror awaits this city now that the keepers of the old ways have failed.
I am now sitting in my apartment and staring out through the rain-streaked glass at the dark river below, watching as it slowly grows in strength, gathering unto itself the power of this unrelenting rain, holding within its darkness all the lights of the city around it- waiting to snuff them out. I feel, however, my mind turning relentlessly to those moments in the tunnels below where I realized the awful truth that the Gods I had come to doubt were real.
We were going through the familiar rituals, though there were unfilled roles, and empty spaces in the ceremony as too few believers had answered the call. I could feel the heat from the flickering light in sconces arranged around us, smell the incense mixing with the dank scent of the riper lapping at the stoneworks. I was stumbling over the half-remembered incantations when we felt it go wrong.
The chanting of the initiates, casting praise upon the one whose name even now I cannot force myself to write came quicker as we felt cold dark water seep from the floor below and envelop our feet. They grew more frenzied as the water failed to retreat, as it surged and roiled, by the end they were screaming it in abject fear.
The sacrifice was rejected. The river surged and the waters rose through the tunnels. I remember running, dropping my torch in fear as the sound of the white water pouring through the tunnels like a freight train filled my ears.
I see now that the ancient rites have begun to fail all over. This civilization is built on unsteady ground, on the lie that we can control nature and direct it to our will. But the uneasy peace is broken and soon nature will exact its revenge. Already it is beginning: fire and floods, and storm and drought, and the unrelenting rise of the sea at our doors.
Soon the whole world will know the unrestrained fury of the old Gods.
I’m sorry.