Old Temple to an Eldritch Horror
Welcome to Divine Tyranny! In a world where all-powerful gods live among mortals and play with their life for their own entertainment, Archivist Cécile is doing her best to go unnoticed. Unfortunately, the warring water and forging gods are now interested in the archives... Come read about Cécile and the world in which she lives!
Introduction to the story | Cécile | The Archivists | Novel upcoming
Introduction to the story | Cécile | The Archivists | Novel upcoming
A major war is currently going on over the rest of the continent. In theory, the gods' rules forbid the gods from going all out with their power and endangering the mortal realm too much. In practice, so long as there is no direct witness and there can be another vaguely plausible explanation for the magic...
This means that a lot of soil has been thrown around over and even not so close to the battlefield, and that the ground has fractured a little in a few places. And in the excitation of the moment, the gods forgot where they were, and they continued to not realise it even while the curious mortals had a look into all that was revealed with those upsets.
By the time they did realise what was going on, information had already filtered through quite a few people and it was impossible to contain it without endangering the outcome of the war. While, coincidentally, most of those individuals did end up dying in the battles that occurred soon afterwards, the delay was enough to allow for the information to filter to our country, and so naturally it made its way back to the archivists of the royal archives.
What those people saw in the chasm of the earth were the ruins of some extremely old ritual ground, probably dating from even before the foundation of the first city. From the time us, mortals, were hunters-gatherers roaming the land and sometimes coming together to worship a god. But this was not a mere god that was being so honoured in this place. Oh, no. And what makes it so dangerous, is that there were actual representations of the Thing. And like all proper Eldritch Horror, even just looking at it is enough to connect mortals' mind to It and stir It from Its slumber where It lies in the cage the gods have created for It.
By the time the god realised what was going on and put the earth back to its proper place—well above the ruins—it was almost too late, and we nearly had another Eternal Fires incidents. Few details about what exactly happened managed to reach us at the archives. Thankfully, it appears that by the end of it, only a pile of bones of moderate size was added to the ruins before they were reburied.
Gods fighting by Thommas68 on Pixabay
Opinion from the archives
It is horrifying to realise that despite all the precautions we're taking to protect the feeding halls where the Horrors are imprisoned, all the yearly sacrifice we make to keep them asleep, something like that could suddenly happen and let them escape anyway.
Art of the Horrors is not like any divine portraits that can be destroyed but is not to avoid offending the god represented. Representations of the Horrors in those ancient temples and their relics are genuinely indestructible, and so burying them underground was the only solution the gods found.
While not a perfect solution, whenever some of those are rediscovered by mortals, this triggers a sudden high amount of deaths that is rather hard to miss, warning the gods that something is going on and they need to intervene urgently. They've always managed to do it on time, at least so far...
It's amazing how this article barely talks about the actual building and is still intriguing. Also, that header is absolutely horrifying. Nice job!
Thank you! Yes, I didn't like the lost building prompt all that much XD There are much more interesting thing to talk about!