A little people lit a fire in the center of their village. The pleasure it gave that night was immense, greater than the pleasure given by any of the prior fires. It smelled like fine incense; the wood was filled with spring’s sap. It burned warmly but not wildly. As the villagers of Hage gathered ‘round the flames to celebrate themselves, they remembered the fire is the community’s heart, where everyone gathers as one to eat, socialize, dance, and be warm. The flame is God’s gift to humanity, that first contract, that animals can transcend baser matter by transmuting the energy within it. An upswell of drink and conversation that night lead to a public acclimation: if God is to be properly appreciated, His flame must be lit at all hours, must never go out.
Duly, drunkly, a handful of elders volunteered and a group clambered to the home of their hoary old chief. “How is it that we leave our flame lonely in the night, to die tired and friendless while we sleep and work? The fire is a gift from GOD! Shouldn’t we tend to it at all hours every day, to show thanks for what we’re given? Otherwise we stand to anger God and Heaven!”
The chief nodded his head. Gravely, sagely, he turned over their request in his greyed head. After a long minute his tenor intoned: “Yes. This is a good idea. But who will watch it and ensure the flame’s well-treated?”
The drunken elders jawed amongst themselves for a good five minutes before returning an answer. “Well, we’re men. Most of us work. Our wives could watch during the day, and retired men could watch at night.” “At least two people should be watching at all hours, just in case of any laziness or sleepiness or perfidy.” “Yeah! And whoever’s watching the fire should be brought food and drink and fuel so they don’t have to leave!” “Sure! We’ll draft a list of volunteers!”
The chief agreed to the terms proposed, and over the next days people signed up, volunteering their names for this simple, entertaining, sacred task. The flame would never go out again: this would be the contract that kept this people safe in God’s good grace.
The fire remained alight and time passed. The village prospered. The central space where the fire burned cleared into a paved plaza. A canopy rose over the fire, eventually replaced by a broad dome with an oculus to allow smoke’s escape. A row of marble seats arose around the central fire, leaving plenty space for movement, then a second rose around that, slightly raised. If there was a feast, it happened near the fire. Weddings were consecrated when a seal of wax melted in the sacred fire was applied to a contract. Yet still, it was a popular spot to drink at, to eat around. A space and a fire of the people.
As prosperity increased and the structures around this sacred fire grew in beauty and size, pilgrims and sightseers flocked to the village, which had rightly become the Town of Hage, to investigate regional whispers of spirited parties and sacred power. The township caught an imperial eye when its tax revenues shot up and burglaries increased on the roads to and from. One day the emperor himself came to the town to grant it a diocese, with its own high priest and an annual grant to boot. A Council of Firewatchers convened and elected a high priest, granted her an apartment on the 4th floor of a structure overlooking the central square where the fire lived.
Roads leading to the city were improved. Security tightened. A century passed and the empire thrived. Some attributed this golden age to the undying fire in Hage village. Then many. As other cities swelled and shrank, this one grew and grew, and at her heart the Temple to the Undying Fire.
A theater-in-the-round appeared, sinking into the earth around the flame, rising well above it. Concentric canopies grew outward from the original monument, each taller, broader, more ornate. An outer colonnade supported the largest dome in the empire, perhaps the world. All were welcome to view the fire. Many brought offerings of frankincense, myrrh, rare woods and fragrant emulsions, pleasing bits of animals, mineral dusts to play on the color of the fire, so that at some miraculous hours all the rainbow sang from her plumes.
This extraordinary burning activity required the flame pit to be occasionally cleaned. One late summer night well into the 394th year of the flame’s consecration, an elder priest began his ritual cleansing of the flame. Fragrant herbs were added, stacked on one side of the pit, and remaining fuel on the other sides burnt itself out. This allowed for scraping utensils to pull piles of blackened ashes away from the flame. A weekly ritual. Yet this week something strange happened. The herbs burnt more quickly than usual, and some did not catch at all. For a brief moment, the Undying Fire went out altogether.
The elder priest grabbed a torch and relit the flame quickly, stacking up fuel as fast as he could to encourage a powerful fire, and he and the younger priest on duty agreed to never speak of this event to anyone. However there was a devotee asleep in the higher seats of the temple, who started awake at the flame’s death. He watched the priests shakily relight the flame, waited until they settled back down, then fled the building in a panic. Outside he screamed “THE FLAME IS OUT! ALL IS LOST! THE COVENANT IS ENDED! THE END IS COMING!” and was almost at once seized.
Guards dragged him away to a small cell where he hollered a storm until one, recognizing the man, Eliezer, and knowing him to be a teetotaler, entered his cell, slapped him to his senses and asked him why he was making such a damn fuss.
“I-I… I saw the Undying Fire… die! It went out! We broke covenant! The priests will lie about it but the omens are ill! This city is doomed!”
The guard fetched his moaning charge a drink to calm him. The pious wretch calmed after his drink, but merely repeated what he’d said in sadder tones. It seemed he believed he was speaking the truth.
The guard made an incredulous report to his sergeant, who made his way out to the temple to inquire after the truth with the priests themselves. When the sergeant arrived, the lesser priest began to tremble. The elder priest responded confidently to inquiries, laughing here and furrowing there. Nothing unusual had happened, certainly the flame had never gone out, would never go out. When presented with the same inquiries the lesser priest bleated “AH! BUT IT WAS ONLY FOR A MINUTE!”
The head priest slapped his lesser’s head hissing “shut up” but a clear truth settled on the sergeant’s shoulders, who sat and cradled his head between his knees for a time. The young priest bawled “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry” and the head priest fell into explaining how “It never really went out, the embers were always hot, the flames have done similar things before, it’s nothing to worry about.” After a minute of somber reflection the sergeant stood up and informed the priests “Alright. While yours is a damning dereliction of duty for which you both should be punished by death I will keep silent on this for the good of everyone, and let no one know our Undying Fire is dead, and some alien flame burns in the temple. But know the covenant is broken, and if our beautiful city dies our souls will be as anchors tied to your weak, deceitful ankles, dragging you down to deepest hell.”
The elder priest continued making excuses until the sergeant left. Sighing he turned to the young priest shouting “THE FEWER PEOPLE KNOW THE BETTER THE PROGNOSIS FOR OUR WHOLE CIVILIZATION YOU STUNTED GIBBERING APE!” to which the young priest responded by vomiting.
The night turned to day. A week passed. At the end of that week a border dispute with a neighboring kingdom ended in 1,000 dead for both sides, and while this was not unheard of, and no land was lost, the crazed devotee Eliezer took to the streets to scream “THE COVENANT IS AT AN END! THE UNDYING FLAME HAS BEEN EXTINGUISHED BY OUR OWN NEGLIGENT HAND! AN ALIEN FIRE SITS IN THE TEMPLE! ALL IS LOST! THE SIGNS ARE EVERYWHERE!” The guards tried to drag him away, but his ideas passed into various heads in the crowd. Mostly the man was ridiculed, but the young priest who was on duty when the fire went out, returning from picking up groceries, fainted hearing Eliezer’s screaming. Several men crowded around, attempting to revive him, and when he opened his eyes he gasped a confession. Those who heard shouted dismay, and dragged the poor priest to the station, where a flustered sergeant attempted to shut the men up.
“I’ll bring the young priest to the Highest Priestess, and we’ll see what She has to say.”
Out of the office, through the crowd that’d begun to congregate outside the garrison’s quarters, winding through the throngs to the tower of the Highest Priestess, the sergeant blew by a receptionist and pounded on the priestess’s door. After strong, muffled protestations from behind the beautifully carved slab of oak, the door crept open and a woman in flowing robes beckoned the sergeant in with his charge.
All was explained, and the priestess, after a long time under a furrowed brow, came to the same conclusion as the sergeant: “Suppress, suppress, suppress! There was no need for anyone to know! Let God sort this out. If the Covenant is broken, the end will come naturally anyway.”
The sergeant asked “Well, what do we do about him? He won’t shut up.”
The priestess considered him a long minute before deciding “We lock him in this tower.”
So the young fool priest found himself in a cellar while the High Priest and the sergeant went out to soothe the crowd.
“Hage, Hagers, the poor priest is cracked up! The heat got the better of him. He was merely repeating what our poor Eliezer shouted. There is no need to panic.”
“WELL,” shouted a Hager, “Why don’t you let HIM tell us that?”
“He’s clearly unwell! We’re resting him from exhaustion. He’ll be upright later. You can ask him whatever you want then.”
But the Hagers kept talking. Eliezer’s story shared a lot of details with the young priest’s. And it sure looked like the sergeant and the High Priestess were hiding something. A good third of the crowd wanted to believe the priestess, and chose to do so. The other two thirds could not believe her. The crowd worked up to a boil. Skeptical Hagers argued within themselves. Some that the covenant was broken by God for the city’s faithlessness, too much focus on the temple and not the fire. Some argued that the fire was a symbol, and any fire lit in that temple was a sign the covenant remained intact, as fire changes all the time and a literal translation of the traditional commandment was absurd. Some found it to be a dereliction of duty and that the only way to satisfy God was to burn the total current round of Priests of the Undying Flame. This received a concerning amount of support.
The High Priestess had the sergeant move to disperse the crowd, which continued to grow.
“Hagers, please! This will all be sorted out by tomorrow, we’ll have an investigation, you have to trust us to handle the situation!”
The sergeant and a few other soldiers tried advancing on the crowd, which gave angry shouts. Skeptics surged forward, convinced they needed to get their hands on the young priest NOW, while the faithful pushed back. Punches were thrown. Panic ensued. In the chaos, a soldier pulled his sword and sheathed it in the face of a young smith from a prominent family. Fury erupted and the soldiers were trampled and disarmed. The crowd pushed past the priestess, beat its way into her tower, and rampaged about. Hagers tore open doors and grabbed whatever they pleased until they found the young priest who begged for his life, confessed everything, and apologized again and again in ragged tones.
The crowd dragged the hapless young priest from his cellar into the Temple of the Undying Flame and pushed through to the crackling fire at its core. The priest issued a last plaintive moan before being cast directly into the flame, where he screamed and writhed and died. A pleasant smell of meat and fat filled the air. Then an acrid char. Soldiers charged into the Temple and the crowd dispersed.
The temperament of Hage had shattered. 5 soldiers lay dead and 17 Hagers. While there was a manhunt for the crowd’s leaders, no one was forthcoming with evidence. The town felt tense, however in the following weeks nothing happened but conversation. The guards, even the High Priestess, thought God had been satisfied.
Then the border skirmish turned into an outright siege, which sent Eliezer screaming into the streets again.
“YOU THOUGHT GOD WANTED YOU TO MURDER A PRIEST? THIS IS HOW FAR YOU HAVE FALLEN! NO, GOD WILL NOT STOP UNTIL EACH OF YOU SINFUL PERSONS, FORGETFUL OF HIS WORD, FALLS TO SWORD AND FLAME! OUR FOES ARE THE HAND OF GOD! THE FLAME WENT OUT BY HIS SNUFFING FINGER! WE WILL TASTE THE LONG AND HATEFUL DEATHS OF MEN ABANDONED BY PROVIDENCE, A SUICIDE BY THE TREACHERY OF FAITHLESS DEVOTIONS AND MATERIALIST LUSTS, FIRE AND PLAGUE, RAVAGED GENITALS, MISSHAPEN CHILDREN, MOULDERING FOODS! WE ARE AT THE END O-”
Eliezer’s fervent ravings attracted more and more Hagers. Men started wearing sackcloth. News travelled to the provincial capital, then the Imperial capital. Soldiers were sent to secure the region as the Empire prepared for war.
After one particularly fitful day, poor Eliezer was nabbed as he slept in the Temple by the guards and locked in a prison tower for his antics. Hagers became suspicious. The Skeptics demanded their One Honest Man be released. The Faithful supported his suppression as a false prophet, and cause of the death of the poor young priest. All of which culminated in a second riot in which 12 guards were stabbed to death and 53 Hagers were variously sliced and trampled, with the elder priest who was on duty when the fire went out being burned. This did not improve the martial situation of the Empire.
The neighboring kingdom had won her siege of the border town, and beaten soldiers filed through Hage, bivouacking outside for a night on their way back to a strategic retreat.
Some of the soldiers there got wind that the Undying Fire had died. Some of the soldiers deserted camp immediately. Some of the soldiers joined the Skeptics demanding the release of Eliezer. That the Head Priestess lied was a terrible scandal. That the Fire went out was the worst possible omen.
So some of the soldiers and half of the town rose to arms in the night, demanded Eliezer’s release, and when he was not released threw the Head Priestess in Undying Fire, released Eliezer themselves, and made off in the night to defect to their enemy’s army. Eliezer lead the group, screaming about the invading nation being the “HAND OF GOD LIBERATING HIS CITY FROM THE FOOLS WHO SINNED AGAINST HIM FORGETTING THEIR PLACE IN THE WORLD”. When the defectors found themselves at the enemy’s camp, they were taken prisoner, interrogated, and executed to a man.
Hage, in serious turmoil and without a strong army to protect her, fell after a short and confusing siege, the Undying Flame was doused, and the city was sacked, terribly. Once the province was taken, the Emperor was forced into an accord with the invading kingdom, and Hage never recovered her glory. Peasants largely carted off stones from the ruins to construct new houses and temples. A new God had come to rule the land.
