The Sacrifice

The Sacrifice

45 Vulneri Mundi (VM)


The dead child's body slowly floated down the stream next to Arcadia. It was not alone. Soon dozens of bodies were flowing down the river towards the ocean. Arcadia was the first city of the Centaurs, started just a few years after the Wounding of the World. There was still Centaurs alive who remembered what the world had been like when there were no Centaurs or any of the other nations. Living here in Arcadia had been difficult. The land around the harbor was marshy and it was hard to grow enough food. The city was under constant threat from tidal flooding and too many Centaurs had fallen prey to the bogs around the city. Centaurs struggled to spread out from Arcadia. The dozens of dead bloated bodies in this river were from a small village that had moved to the north to escape the vapors of the bog, but had been killed by a vicious creature earlier in the night. They had been slashed apart by claws and their bodies had been ripped open by teeth.
Ajax looked down at the foal again as it passed by. It had been a boy, near the same age as one of his sons. He would never grow up to be a stallion. He looked over at Aphrodite. She had come to him a few weeks ago demanding Arcadia worship her. In exchange, she would make Arcadia the wealthiest city in the world and a great nation would be born here. But her terms for worship were steep.
"The attacks will become worse," the goddess said to him. She said it so casually, like it was only an observation.
"I will not sacrifice my first born to you or require the other leaders of the city to do the same," he wanted to grab his wooden spear and impale her and leave her body standing there next to the river as a warning to the other gods and goddesses who had returned to Canaan. He heard rumors that they were trying to manipulate the remnants of Bristlecone's army into returning to slavery by worshipping them.
"I want to help you, General Ajax," she said as she let her robes fall of her shoulder, exposing almost all of her full left breast. When she had arrived to the city, she had walked on two legs like a firstborn, but after seeing the centaurs, the reports were she changed her body so she appeared to be a Centaur. She was the most beautiful centaur he had seen. She had a golden coat, with gold hair with silver highlights; real silver and not just the color of silver. Her skin was marbled white with streaks of gold and black. She wore robes over her firstborn torso, but far too often they fell open when she was seeking something him.
"Your help? These attacks didn't happen until you arrived. I know you're behind them the creatures hunting my kind in the night." His hand was on his pike now.
"You're a fool . . . Ajax. I offer you wealth greater than you can imagine for you and your descendants. You will start a dynasty which will last thousands of years. Centaurs will become the world's rulers and you complain that I ask only for your oldest child? I should ask for all of your children and their children."
He raised his pike to throw at her. She looked at him and dismissed him.
With a flicker of her hands, it turned into a giant python and started to attack him. "You're a fool. I will not work with you. Your line ends today."
Ajax fought against the python, as it struck out at him and bit him. His hands and arms were bleeding from being shredded by the python's sharp teeth. A young man in his retinue stepped up to help him. "Hold still General."
Ajax managed to grab the head of the python and held it out to the young man. He couldn't have been more than eighteen. He didn't even know the young man's name. The young man lunged at the head of the python with his pike, but the pike struck Ajax in the chest. Ajax fell to the ground and the python, now free, started to wrap around Ajax's chest to try to swallow him.
"Why? Why kill me," he said through pained breath as the blood burst out of him in bubbles that floated slowly away from him.
"Anyone from the old world must die," he said with a bitter and sour expression on his face. "You're memories remind you that you were a firstborn. You remember the old God. You and your memories don't belong in the new world. We don't need your kind anymore."
He walked away from Ajax and kneeled offering Aphrodite his wooden pike with blood on the sharp end. She picked it up and in her hands, it glowed red hot until it was a steel sword. The sword had golden and silver lines throughout the metal and the handle was a golden leather hilt. He could hear accusations and heated arguments breaking out behind him. Many of them had been loyal to General Ajax. But they were of the old world and they would not be coming into the new world with him. She then blessed him and he turned around and started attacking the Centaurs who had been in Bristlecone's army. They tried to fight against him, but he was too fast and too strong. His sword cut through their flesh and leather armor like his enemies were just a mist. The young men started cheering and fighting too and soon, with their help, all the Centaurs who had started their lives as firstborn were dead.
He turned to the soldiers who had joined him. "We must purge our kind of the firstborn's taint of weakness and impurity. We will become the servants of Aphrodite. I declare, from our first day to our last day, the Centaur nation will always serve the great goddess Aphrodite." He turned to her and kneeled and commanded his men to follow suit. Everyone kneeled.
By that evening, the purge had been completed. Tyre had built an altar himself with his own hands. He had gathered the stones from the destroyed homes of Ajax and the other leaders. Their families had all laid dead, except for Ajax's. He had killed many of the people himself with Aphrodite's sword. The fires around him were burning bright and the heat, even in the cooler spring air, was making him sweat. But he kept grabbing different stones, pulling them out of the rubble. He tried to grab as many as he could which we're bloodied by the dead. As he did this, he struggled with the appropriate name for the altar he was building. It took him several hours; the fires were starting to burn down to embers and the night air made the sweat and lather on his flanks feel like ice against him. But he burned with an internal heat and finally, he had an altar of one hundred thirty stones. He ignored the crying and pleading from the women and children around him. Many of the women had already been physically taken by his soldiers so that they would bear the soldier's children, erasing the stain of their previous sins of having chosen the wrong husbands. He placed the last stone with a grunt of effort. He was exhausted, but felt feverish with energy.
Hundreds of young Centaur men began to cheer. The entire village had been purged and pillaged. Sons had murdered their fathers and mothers. Siblings had fought against siblings. If their mother had been born after the Wounding, sons forcibly took their mothers as their wives. The old world was dead. Tyre would make sure the memory of it and the firstborn would be destroyed forever. The smell of iron lay upon everything. As the cheering died down, Aphrodite came up to Tyre and kissed him passionately. In front of everyone, they made love on the altar, sanctifying it. When they finished, Aphrodite pushed him away from her. She looked at the crowd. "Your love will save you and your new wives," she said to the soldiers.
"Bring me my sacrifices," she said to him. She was cold and distant. Her eyes were grown black like night and the gold in her hair gleamed with a fire he had never seen. She smelled like sulfur and unholy things. He became afraid of her.
Ajax had been blessed with many children. Exactly thirteen young foals, colts and mares, from seventeen down to two. The youngest still hadn't gone through her colting where she gained her back two legs. Ajax's children stood there stoically, condemning him, but they were they ones shackled to a stake in the ground like an animal while he stood free. He grabbed the youngest one. He dragged her screaming and kicking body up to the altar. He looked directly into the eyes of the oldest son who was pulling against his stake with all his strength and then cut the little girl's throat, her blood covering the altar. And in that moment, he knew what he would call his Altar to Aphrodite. It would be known forever as Ajax's Altar, to mark the shame of his children who had to watch their brothers and sisters murdered on it.
Aphrodite rubbed the blood of of the young girl over her bare breasts and through her hair and into her privates. She then command the next to be sacrificed. And the next. Until all thirteen laid discarded on the ground, their blood on the altar and on Aphrodite. Then Aphrodite went up and down the line of his men, laying down with each of them in a group.
The next morning, in the light of day, Tyre could see the destruction his anger and resentment had caused. His entire village had been leveled. The corpses were already gathering flies and a stench of early rot was rising. His men, just boys really, started to look ashamed of themselves as they started to see what they had caused in their moments of rebellion and anger and were already looking at Tyre with eyes of hatred. Aphrodite had disappeared in the night.
Realizing his life was probably forfeit, his goddess having abandoned him, he tried to order his men to remove the dead bodies. But instead, he felt a road apple splatter across his face. Then his back and the next one was a rock and it broke his arm. Soon, hundreds of stones were flying and his blood spilled out to join the sacrificed at Aphrodite's altar. The second it touched the altar, as he slowly faded, a bright light burst from the altar and shook the ground. A voice called out, "You will keep my commandments and every year, you will sacrifice thirteen children on the Altar of Tyre. If you fail, even one year, I will destroy you and your city, throwing you and your city into the ocean."
Around the Altar, concentric circles started to form and the earth erupted, raising higher and higher until all the marshes were drained around them. Then homes and walls broke out of the ground in one of the rings and a small palace formed around the Altar in the center ring as his body was pulled into the earth and Gaia swallowed him alive.