Chapter Text
Children
Children
Children
The woman in the middle of the hall sighed wistfully. She smiled, a bright hopeful one at that, and slowly paced a well worn circle taking great measure to catch eyes with every child she could.
“you are our future.” She continued, her voice and her posture dropping with each syllable until her sentence turned into an almost reverent whisper and her shadow turned into a spider. “And as your guardians we must teach you the ways and our stories lest they be lost to the sifting of the sands of time”
“FOR OUR LoRR ALMIGHTY,” She cried, snapping into a soldiers stance and raising her arms, as if the fluorescent lights above held all the answers. She scared the children into such a silence it took them a full minute to return the expected answer.
”For our lord, our savior,” they said, finally.
She smiled once more, a wide toothy one that spooked the youngest of the children surrounding her. None of them had ever seen the old woman before (although if you managed to speak to the oldest of them they could tell you that this was a yearly occurrence for those who had reached their flowering).The children were completely terrified and their hands, shoved into their sleeves due to the cold, betrayed them.
“So!” She exclaimed, her voice rising into a happy lilt, once more making a number of the children jump in fear. “It is my job to teach those of you who are ready about our yearly and our most important sacrifice”
The children didn’t flinch at this, no, they drew closer instead. They knew very well about The Sacrifice and the great honour it would be to become one, and for what seemed to be the first time in their lives an adult would give them a true and definite answer to what to them was the greatest mystery of their lifetime.
“Are you ready children?” The woman asked, foolishly, the ditzy act dropped then; there were serious matters at hand. The children nodded, some more fervently than others (not to mention those that nodded off to the realm of sleep).They were ready
They wanted answers.
“Good, it is time for you to learn the story of
The demon beneath our mountain”