Yesteryear Fiction

Old Gods, New Faces
By Amelia Bones


When Gnarissia fell to the Dolgothan empire, the hammerfall of troops led by Dolgotha’s patron god crushed the entire nation into dust. It was a “grudge fulfilled,” the oracle historians say, a dark but necessary conclusion to a war that had brewed, boiled and spat for centuries.

But the forbidden books of the high magister tell a different story. Perhaps that is why they are forbidden. Their passages often contradict the teachings of the priesthood at the university monasteries.

Unlike the oracle historians, they speak of a time when the assassins of a small and dark little hamlet called Dolgotha slunk across the sands to Gnarissia, a prosperous pillar of light and peace in the bright east, and steadily, over time, poisoned her people, profiting off of each dying citizen with false remedies and magics that only masked the symptoms for a time.

Then, marching against the minimal and sickly resistance that was life, our ancestors stole the lands of Gnarissia and abandoned their old, rotting village to squander in namelessness while their newly captured lands became the new nation of Dolgotha. Even the old gods of Gnarissia were left in place, new faces for the spirits of our codeces, new splendor for our faith.


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BIO: I am alive, against all odds and against what has to be some of the worst luck. One of these days, I’ll get laid again, and all will be right with the world.