1002. Exogignesthai, 2
(Rose)
Fast forward a few millennia of history. Civilisation grows. Dynasties keep changing as early warlords become competing kings and republics.
All along the while history of the world is building its core with political humanity, some people still dig for its unclear archaeological roots.
Some intuitive spiritualities took momentum and developed into unifying forces becoming as religions. Models of explanations still mixing scientific method and superstitions into a somewhat coherent tale.
Artefacts from prehistoric times are coveted by some ruling classes hoping to pierce their secrets. To no known avail, but superstitions and faith affect both the little people and the rulers truly.
Gradually technology progresses. Machines always more complex and costly are being manufactured in growing networked infrastructures. Livelihood increases steadily along the sums of human knowledge. Yet, there still are wars, for political reasons as well as primal ambitions sometimes.
Some groups focus on studying the clues about the past, and making sense of the details that are unearthed and odd to them.
There are discrepancies they begin to realise, between what they learn of physics and chemistry, and what they observe from their fossilised past.
As much as the mathematicians can have spirituality, they can’t figure out what dark energies are missing from their models.
The biggest international church that would generally prevail is also the one most open to revisionism of its understandings and beliefs, facing new discoveries and proven theories through repeated experimentations.
Theos, as they would be called, is paradoxically the most powerful religion to ever grow, and the less zealous in arbitrary dogma. They study what reality is, more than they fantasize it, and their vision of a creationist god is more tolerant than others.
They both enforce the belief in the creator almighty, and the new understandings of biological adaptation, meaning the evolution of lands and species.
And unfortunately, if species can split upon different paths in differently isolated environments, in a matter of a few generations sometimes; they would still estimate that life needed a billion years at least to reach their current level of things.
All the while archaeology showed all around the world that no fossils are that old, and that chemically, the older traces of silt were a few hundred millions years at most. Geologic studies even confirmed that the environment shifted abruptly around that time and that life wasn’t around for much longer.
Meaning, possibly there really had been a creationist god at the time. A tinkerer boosting things forward at the very least, like a great platinum catalyst. And they looked for clues of its coming. The odd tetrahedron sculptures recorded throughout history here and there might be more than its theological symbol, they might be an historical clue for it.
~
Theos as a church also had philosophies to share and enforce. One of them growing in importance over the centuries was in the reverence of oracles, rare selected people meaning to speak the voice of god.
Some people occasionally had delusions and hallucinations, driving them to becoming fools or fanatics, into obsessive volition.
Theos sieved the miracles from the occasional pure madness or even fraud. Since the oracles could be quite respected and listened to, it was always a game of fool and pretend.
There was nothing better or easier to justify a war and galvanize people, than a zealous preacher whom was dead convinced they heard the voice of god telling them to.
Even for them, the balance between politics and faith was a common tool.
Theos tried to remain neutral from the temporal conflicts of kings, but the allure of standing on the winning side of conquests tended to corrupt even the wisest.
Wars continued occasionally. Theos was used in various ways, wilful or not.
For these oracles that Theos looked for, to sort and then protect the better ones, they developed a philosophy to justify them. They called it the theory of Animus.
It was the idea how beyond the obvious random selection of people able to hear god, that there were possibly some fragments of divinity still coursing through their veins as people. The tiniest leftovers of an early creationist paradise, now diluted over the ages and the countless generation of people.
But these archaic cells of gods, albeit theoretical, could be like the rare artefacts found in some geological layers at times.
They wanted to listen to the oracles that had an Animus speaking through them, an insight from god. And they also wanted to study their biology to hopefully reveal their truth and common history, if that theory would hold itself against experiments.
This didn’t seem like much, but the oracles with an Animus tended to behave with very different drive from the common folk. They were driven. They sometimes become prophets changing the course of Theos, or heroes greatly affecting the political checkers of nations and balances of powers.
They were people to revere and love for the greatness they brought, or to dread and fear for the madness they could spread havoc.
~
Animus were of different kind from common folk, rapidly revealing themselves as they grew into adulthood.
Usually they implied hearing the voice of god at night.
The individual people personality would then embrace it or fight it back, or use it for themselves. Between these uncertainties and the often cryptic words or ideas being transmitted, it was a challenge to sort.
But generally they helped to some extent improving the tenets and scriptures of Theos.
Sometimes they had a peculiar and very focused passion into a field of science or another, bringing great improvement to their country. And sometimes they were strategist with good intuition and advice, if not great health and vigour as a foot soldier.
But otherwise, they could hear different things more random or more gruesome, driving them to other forms of enlightenment or perhaps insanity.
The levels of impact also varied seemingly randomly in the population, and there wasn’t an obvious breed of people more prone to receiving an Animus than any other.
The one prevalent aspect though, was how all the types of animus were finding faith in their revelations. The real ones at least became quite zealous. They believed in the hidden god and its voice they could hear sometimes in the night.
Except perhaps someday, for this one.
She... Hm... Let’s call her... Beatrice. Yes, that will work.
Beatrice was born with an unusual Animus.
This one at night didn’t hear the similar insight for people to unify and history to move toward technological and industrial progress.
Rather, she heard oddly counter-type arguments.
The voice told her to doubt the most travelled roads and question the powers that could also make mistakes.
They told her how the right way forward wasn’t always the intolerant straight line.
They incited her not to seek power above all, but wisdom and freedom.
She was incited indirectly not to look for the cover and recognition for Theos, but her own will to power.
Beatrice grew the most discreet of Animus of her kind. She was bright, but nothing out of the ordinary in her country. And she doubted the voices of her feudal lord just as the wills of the local church regularly.
She didn’t seek to prove a point, only to do well with her kind. She asserted the confidence and experience of these people without seeking confrontation that would have ended poorly for her.
She was born and lived in a small country, vassal to a wide and old empire and nearing the borders of a younger and more aggressive one.
The old empire had been the technological superpower of the continent for a long while, thankful to a long line of skilled and enlightened mechanical engineers apt to produce quite the breakthrough weaponry.
Halas the golden age was long past, and other countries had gradually caught back the technological disparity. The old empire and its smaller kingdoms and domains had continuously gone weaker recently.
The world was always changing, but thankfully Beatrice had lived her whole life safe in her little country.
Her spouse, Dante, was often away at war however. Since their little country was vassal to this old empire struggling on too many fronts, it always needed a few more soldiers, struggling to stop its bleeding everywhere. So Beatrice’s husband was often away.
Although their life together was happy when he was home, they could tell the overall political situation above their head was dimming. The old empire was fighting on too many fronts and issues at the same time. It was crumbling.
The couple meanwhile loved each other, and Dante respected her one of a kind counter-type Animus. He loved her, and not the voices in the night that she sometimes heard.
They were quite happy.
Until one fateful day or night.
~
Beatrice heard the explosions on her way back from the old mines.
Het town was being bombarded. The flames were taking it all before she could reach back and help.
Soldiers and machines of a more modern kind were laying waste to the very sparse and inadequate defences they had.
The resistance from the soldiers in town at the time was meaningless and ruthlessly butchered. They all died, including him.
She felt despair and anger of a new kind as she arrived.
She lost him. She lost everything.
All but the voices telling her to rise and fight back. Against everything and anything. Even if it seemed she had no chance to win.
Beatrice picked up the sword and flared at the invaders that were beginning to relax a little too hastily.
They had won this odd fight for their master, but she could still make them lose enough lives to reconsider things onward.
She gutted down a few of them who were improvised prison guards, holding cages of prisoners.
They had stomped the defences and now were regrouping people from the village and taking them away in mass; probably to be used or sold as slaves on the other side of the frontier.
Beatrice threw back enough unexpected and rapid mayhem to save a handful of her kin, and inflict some noteworthy losses to the enemy.
Enough to disorganise in counter-strikes the guards left behind, stealing their weaponry and fighting back.
Enough to warrant an even more violent response eventually, and ignite a new fire to this new war.
~
