CH 1

It was a sultry evening in southern Peru, the sun setting outside the cave’s mouth. The orange light bathed the entrance communicating a natural clock. It would be night soon, I needed to finish my work quickly. Deep in the heart of Peru I've discovered a lost temple to Dencu, a Peruvian god of change. He is not mentioned but once in any ancient Peruvian texts but was believed, in this isolated cult’s beliefs, to be the supreme god of all the dynamics of the cosmos. I understood him less as a god but more as a force of nature, so much power. But this cult identified him as having a personality and a will.

I was here to discover that will.

Thirty feet into the cave there is a drop to another thirty feet which hides the shrine’s entrance. Its architecture is unlike any other in Peru’s ancestral structures. It’s an alien construction, both in form and function. Its far more advance and, once more, totally separate from any other constructions. I would've believed it was an invasive religion’s base camp had the language not been identical to Inca’s of the region and time period.

I found, in the center of the chamber, the sole idol representing Dencu. I rested my hand on it, assuring myself both of its reality and my assurance of fame throughout the anthropological society. Maybe even the approval of my father.

A lightning bolt of searing pain spiked into my palm. Fire and heat began to burn the flesh on my hand, the skin bubbling. Fire burnt through my glove revealing a neat pattern or a triangle.

Less a triangle and more of the scientist symbol Delta. The fire put itself off revealing the pattern now imbued upon the back of my hand. The glow of embers ceased and a tattoo of Delta shimmered. It gleaned like it was painted on with gloss. I rubbed it futilely; it was a part of me now.

Making my way back to the camp I felt intensely unnerved, as if the physics of the world had changed without me noticing. The world I saw was a curtain. I found my tent to a welcomed rest, I felt like I could sleep for a thousand years.

I had a dream.

 

I was stranded in a sea of blackness, shrouded in a green mist. Without any seen light source I could perceive the mist. An orb of light glowed to life, filtered green by the mist.

There was a man, in a suit, at a desk. My lawyer, Thomas Filch, sat before me. He looked up, understanding me as a query to address. Finishing his paperwork with a quick signature Filch stood up, buttoned his blazer, and addressed me.

“Young Doctor Anderson, how are you feeling?”

His voice was a growl in his pronunciation of my name which echoed beyond this small office. My awareness felt the room around me and judged it an illusion. Books on the built-in wall shelf lacked titles, papers on the desk were written in scribbles, and Filch’s eyes were not his own. He would blink and they would change back to his brown irises but would inevitably turn green.

“You’re Dencu aren't you? The elder god of change?”

“I have many names. On the plains of Xellithon I am known as G’thallu’zanth’kul’hilputhstan. I am worshiped on a thousand worlds throughout the universe. Life is not my concern but the entire world it acts on, I act upon it. You believe you have power to alter the world, it is I who has power to alter everything.”

He spoke in a booming voice, rattling the room. I accepted the power his voice commanded and I just stood, not in respect, but in the understanding that of the infinite number of things it could do to me it chose to converse; and I considered myself lucky.

“This is a dream; I know you speak through dreams, you and all the other old gods.”

“You know about us? Good, that’ll shave off exposition time. I’m in need of a champion, my chess-piece on earth, enacting my will.”

“I’d resist, I’d put up a fight and give a case for my freedom but I know how you work. What do you want?”

“I like cooperative souls. You will know when I need you, my mark will speak you, guide you.”

“Why have a mortal do a god’s works?”

“There are things even a god cannot do.”

The dream evaporated into mist and I was awake.