K-Zu-Ziro Origin Story (SE: Special Edition)

[K-Zu-Ziro]

School Time, Kids!

Fresh fruit and the zeal of the morning sun brought every student down the path and into the learning garden. Girls and boys giggled into their places. The air flushed their lungs a with a lifetime, lush and wild. Nudges and notes flowed through the congregation. Children didn't need to hope for joy, they jumped for joy with intermittent unpredictability. Each face opened, a leaf bathing in the glow. Today, teacher was going to be their sun. His story telling skills earned their hearts on the first day of the school year.

Their village was blessed with twelve elders, the thirteenth was fresh in her grave. It was unlike the tree people of Atru Mombella to see things in a negative light. Twelve was a blessing, without a doubt. Silky but thin, Elder Kcaj bore a beard by some measurements. In spite of an aggressive reduction in vision, he still clutched the old story books when teaching the children. He told all the stories from memory. But, he wanted to emphasise the importance of reading. His conical headwear kept the sun from blinding what was left his blue eyed vision. Grey was a humble palette to draw from, and so Kcaj was a hunchbacked shawl in a shower of slate. The harmony of his robes sat well with the rich tan of his leathery skin. Clearing his sore throat, he began to tell the tale of the Black Death Harbinger with a rasping baritone worthy of the subject matter. It was a lesson as grim as it was necessary.

"Our world is one of many. The stars are different worlds. Telescopes can teach us that. What we can't see is what lives where we live. I'm talking, of course, about other dimensions. Planet Earth is one; the origin of humans is well known to us. Althanas, or the New World, as we call it, has its own Hitlers and Stalins--maybe worse. We haven't read the ending just yet."

[K-Zu-Ziro]

Hostoland's Madness and Melancholy

One thousand, three hundred and eight years ago, a calcareous proboscis drove a many layered egg into the roots of an ancient tree. Having secured the rebirth of its species, the egg's originator dragged its wretched self away in search of undeserved serenity prior to expiration. This beast was interstellar and interdimensional. A plague written about in languages nobody lives to read. The thing's offspring—a ravenous parasite—wrapped its thoughts around the bounty of life, squeezing the grand old oak that had lived for a hundred years at the summit of a hilltop. Verdant glows faded with each season into the inescapable gravity of obsidian. Its bark broke and cracked, turning shades of stone and oil as the transformation proceeded. Living in the mind, but dead in the fibres—the tree decorated its sorrowful boughs with blackened leaves that rustled without sound. Via symbiosis, the tree gained an awareness of itself and desires began to fester. Albeit, desires moulded amongst those of its alien passenger.

Its dire magnificence absorbed worshippers from the ranks of the indigenous people. It was named and became the Mahia T-Zu-Hosto. Roots, bulging from the earth, liquidised rock and froze soil—side-by-side, to the disbelief of the learned. Rotund mammalian fuzz balls waddled up to the roots and kept their meat from the hunt cold and fresh in the frigid earth, and when ready dragged the flesh centimetres to the side in order to cook atop the unbelievable lava. With their floppy ears as anchors, they created headdresses from the black foliage to signify status among the tribe. And as the years tumbled, Spring dances, Summer parties, Winter feasts and Autumn harvest festivals were held annually in the increasingly gargantuan tree's powerful shade. What emerged as a parasite and victim relationship between tree and egg, became a three way symbiosis including the Hostians (they had a different name before they worshipped the tree, but its telepathic influence over them had scrubbed clean any remnants of their original culture).

Contentedness flourished among the Cult of the Black Tree, the name given to the Hostians by outsiders. An unprecedented period of peace blessed the centuries. Professions were established outshining the rival sentient species in the surrounding area; architects, doctors, physicists, philosophers, chemists, engineers, et al. The work of the architects, though, was most evident in the miles encircling Mahia T-Zu-Hosto. Bulbous domes peaked the majestic temples dedicated to the Black Tree. Each family was provided a home with running water in addition to a heating system for the winter and a cooling system for the summer, based—of course—on the tree's root magic. Metallurgy and natural gas allowed street lamps to light the yellow brick streets. The high chiefs of old had been replaced by an elected council and their meetings took place in a palatial hall wedged amongst the ornate churches and temples of the city's centre. The crowning achievement of the architect's guild was the university, in which they—and other professionals—trained the next generation.

[K-Zu-Ziro]

Hidden from the splendid success of the Hostians, the egg had split open and from it grew gelatinous tentacles. Creeping and stretching tentacles. The muscle-strong arms flexed and tensed to make hollow bough and root alike, running central to every offshoot of the innocent tree. Its grip on the host had expanded beyond merely mental and grew to encompass the physical also. T-Zu-Hosto strained each branch to point its thick cloak of black leaves directly at the beating sun, ravaging all the energy it could. Tar leaked as saliva from the breaks in its bark, Mahia T-Zu-Hosto could no longer hide its slobbering hunger. For centuries the molten rock had heated and the frozen earth had cooled, but in this penultimate developmental phase those magics enveloping the tree's roots weakened and failed. The T-Zu-Hostian priests, their minds swayed by the reach of the maturing being inside the tree, began to prophesise the end times. In deep trances, mind controlled, they whispered, “The Child of the Black Tree God will kill us all”. This haunting phrase was increasingly ubiquitous. The words were scrawled in black paint across the façade of every civic building in the city, mocking the arrogance of Hostoland's marvellous architects.

[K-Zu-Ziro]

In spite of the ominous predictions of the clergy, the year's Summer Festival went ahead as planned. Bright banners sailed between the graffiti ridden buildings, street food was prepared without a sense of moderation while red and white petals tossed in celebration quickly clogged the storm drains along Hostoland's thoroughfare. Furry citizens ambled hand-in-hand with family members along the main street and towards the tree that formed the very core of their entire civilisation.

“Ma, can I have some shells???” whined a little boy to his smiling mother.

“What on earth for?”

“I get a roasted deer hock every year, maaaaaaaaaaaaa—come oooooooon!”

“Alright then, go on, go on” she said pulling enough shells out of her pocket for the little one.

“You're the best”, the alternative coins were snatched from paw to paw and he was gone.

[K-Zu-Ziro]

Away from the melody of the festival, the ordained sat in basement prayer rooms, desperately trying to commune with their deity. Silence. The incessant influence in their head that had guided their worship all their lives was gone. All that was left was to make plans for the coming apocalypse. To observe the wishes of Mahia T-Zu-Hosto. Finally, ending their prayers, came the toll of the city's bell. This year's gong rang in their ears with a deafening cold. Priestess and priest alike smiled reassuringly as they exited the churches surrounding T-Zu-Hosto. Joining left hand to right, a universal gesture of piety, they moved through the parted crowd and kneeled before the tree.

One minute's silence was to be observed, in accordance with tradition.

A cough.

Deep breaths.

A Sniffle.

Quiet nibbles as the boy stole a bite or two of his juicy hock.

The dull clatter of a pocket full of iridescent shells hitting the yellow brick pavement.

10 seconds remained.

9 …

8 …

7 …

6 …

5 …

4 …

3 …

2 …

1 …

A RUPTUROUS CHEER SHATTERED THE SILENCE!!! Everybody threw their arms in the air and pretty petals filled the air. Hostians grabbed each other and danced in joyous circles. The summer festival had passed as it had with the success of each year before it. Bellies were full of meat and veg and hearts were at ease. Mahia T-Zu-Hosto still loved its nation of little fuzz balls. It was clear.

[K-Zu-Ziro]

Shedding the veil of hocus pocus, T-Zu-Hosto's trunk cracked with a rapidity unfamiliar to most vegetation. Spewing out came a gangly hexapod, despite being smothered in black goop it was immediately recognisable as an insect. Reminiscent of an afterbirth covered antelope taking its first steps, the Child of the Black Tree God awkwardly rose to a hind leg stance. Towering eight feet tall over the harmless Hostians, the tallest among them reached three feet even, it hissed like a tropical cockroach calling for a mate. People froze, ran and screamed. Noon, in the heat of summer, quickly baked the black goop dry. It formed a crust upon a matte black carapace. Veiny cellophane wings emerged from behind the creature, stretching to span ten feet. The appendages buzzed in a blur of unnatural speed. The newborn rose to a hover just above the pool of liquid it had stood in. Six elongated limbs dangled their natural born arsenal of blades and pincers. The spawn's bug-eyed head snapped left and right as it quickly digested its surroundings.

[K-Zu-Ziro]

The learned—professors, philosophers and priests—had the wherewithal to look beyond the monstrosity. Instead, they spared a gaze for the broken husk which had given birth to the exoskeletal being. Had what was inside the tree become this? Is the tree dead? Was God nothing but a wretched insect all these years? Anybody looking could see, hanging from the open trunk, a tangle of tentacles. They were limp and dead. A rich cherry flush was fading from the tentacles to become a grey white as they examined from a safe distance.

[K-Zu-Ziro]

Hiissssssssss!!! GARGHH!!! Blood spilled with an unnerving splatter at the feet of the deer hock boy. A fur-covered Hostoland head with lifeless, glassy eyes rolled into the boy's view. The Child of the Black Tree God was circling above. Then, the head's body followed with a bruising thud after a long fall. The creature swooped down again and buried its stabbing claw in the back of the deer hock boy's head and gave him a final ride into the heavens before, again, dropping the limp body onto the dainty brick paving below. Carnage continued. Street lamps glowed pink through a coat of blood while an intestine snaked down a storm drain and into the city sewers—the chunks of fur-matted flesh brought more colour to the street-scape than the banners and petals had. The festive melody of enjoyment sank into a chorus of disjointed screams.

[K-Zu-Ziro]

Safely behind the stained glass of the Church of the Obsidian Leaf, Prof. Duggsteen scribbled furiously into his notepad. His furry little paws sprang back like a typewriter after reaching the end of the page. “This is it!”, his words whistled through the large incisors occupying his little mouth. “If, and it's a big IF—if I can survive this will make a great paper!”. Duggsteen was thrilled that he could finally prove science had the real answer for what was inside their tree. Ending the influence of the zombified clerics had been a lifelong goal of his. Yet, for all his intelligence, Duggsteen seemed to be oblivious to the fact that society as he knew it was coming to a blood-curdling end. Genocide was a runaway train rattling to the end of the line. Then, the Professor's eyes widened with surprise.

The limp, white arms of Mahia T-Zu-Hosto warmed to a vigorous red and bolted into the sky, twisting into a thick braid of many tentacles acting as one. The Black Tree God was alive and the demon spawn was its target. It knocked its only child out of the sky before swaddling it to the ground. Duggsteen was pleased to see first hand that the long theorised being within the tree was real. And it was protecting the people. But what was the relationship between bug and tentacle creature? The dog-eared notepad was quickly filled with lovingly scribbled field sketches, annotated in to a degree that belied the time required to produce such detailed notes. Splendid documentation.

[K-Zu-Ziro]

Persistence characterised all life. In the glimmering hope of tear swollen eyes a spot of darkness grew. It grew in every living pair of eyes remaining in all of Hostoland. Speedily, all the eyes were black marbles. Humming a haunting march in unison, the people walked as drones from their hiding places and into the streets they had fled moments earlier. In perfect formation they retraced the steps along the main street to the base of Mahia T-Zu-Hosto's mighty roots.

Pupil, iris and white returned—the people's eyes were clear again. In spite of their released consciousness, they were not afraid. Their minds were tethered to the calming presence of their Lord. Each face in the crowd of thousands smiled through the rodentine twitches of their noses—joy juxtaposed with grizzly gore.