You may have noticed that, the last few days, things were more than a little strange, even if you can't fully remember them now.
I won't apologize for the strangeness, as, for once, I can categorically state that I had !@#$ nothing to do with causing it.
And I can't take credit for its ending, as some of the things that happened before, during, and immediately after that strangeness are so high above your pay grade you'd break your neck trying to crane it up to look at it, and the less said about the strange things we had to do to end that strangeness, the better.
But, as I'm sure you'll be having nightmares about half-remembered things, and be puzzled over world events that seem to have come out of nowhere (like those riots in London, unless you live there and watch something other than !@#$ CNN or FOX), and be wondering why some of your friends and acquaintances, and I hope none of your family, have just flat out !@#$ disappeared, I figure SPYGOD owes you something of an explanation.
So, here goes. Deep breath. Sit down. Grab something really stiff to drink.
(Not my !@#$. That will not help with this.)
First a question: does the name Tyrrhenia ring any bells?
No, it probably doesn't. You might know it as Etruria, which sounds a lot like something off an 80's kids cartoon or something C.S. Lewis babbled on about when he wasn't writing that dog!@#$ apologia masquerading as a series of kids' books. But if I use the term "Etruscan" it'll probably come back to you, along with boring, grade-school trips to the Podunk Art Museum, and the traveling show of ancient goat horn carvings that was just sooooo interesting.
So yes, Etruria was Tyrrhenia, and Tyrrhenia was the empire that used to be in charge in Italy, about 900 years before Christ. They gave Greece its Gods and Rome its Arch, and its Gods, and a few other things besides. And now, all people can remember is Greece and Rome and the fact that something was around for centuries before is pretty much forgotten, thanks to the difficulties of translating Etruscan and Gods know what else.
Well, living in these modern times, we all know that Gods are real, and walk amongst us from time to time. Whether we need them more than they need us is highly debatable, but they're available for magic tricks, birthday parties, and the occasional cosmic crisis. Some of them hobnob with our strategic talents, some of them don't care to mingle, and some just stay the !@#$ away from the modern world and all its push-button, tricknological tomfoolery.
And given some of their habits, that's probably all for the best.
And I know that SPYGOD has told you, before, that the Gods who Greece and Rome's respective pantheons were based on were real, and walked amongst us back in the 60's and 70's before things got a little too colorful and weird for certain theological and economic forces in the 80's, right? It's why we have Deep Ten in the first place, and why we were so poetic and flashy back then, before Rappin Ronnie came to power and we got all dark and morbid and overly self-conscious.
Well, I didn't exactly tell you everything, which is, admittedly, my prerogative. But I think I may have erred in my oversimplification.
You see, those elder beings didn't just provide templates for Rome and Greece to base their Gods on, which were believed in, became real, and still exist in some semblance of their former power, like most so-called Pagan deities do these days.
The truth is that their magical footprint was so large and pronounced that it actually created echoes of themselves, and these echoes went on to have lives independent of any amount of belief they were receiving.
That's why the Greek and Roman gods still resonate with the power that they do. That's why classical antiquity and mythology stand so highly in our cultural forefront. And that's why, out of all the pantheons still active in the world, theirs are still the most powerful, even more so than the folks from the Indian subcontinent whose religions are still !@#$ active to this day.
That's why those two Pantheons never had a "slumber" period where their tales and stories, overwritten by churches or other forces, were downgraded and forgotten. They stayed active all the way from the decline of Greece and Rome up until the modern day.
Now, I'm sure you're wondering what the bright blue !@#$ this has to do with London burning, or those last few days you're having problems remembering fully.
Well, there's a piece of this puzzle missing. These ancient, powerful gods whose thunderous scale of existence created copies of themselves. The initial copies went to Greece. The later copies wound up in Rome. But the middle copies went to Etruria, and were not included with the purchase order when Rome took things over from them.
So where have they been all this time? Locked up by very powerful magic SPYGOD doesn't even pretend to understand. Buried under the earth on a ruined island in the Mediterranean that only shows up once every couple of years for only a day and a night, and then vanishes for a year, a decade, a century, who can say?
Of course, the problem with locks is that you need a key. And the key doesn't do any good if it's not where you can get at it. So the key to this lock on this ruined island has been sitting somewhere in western Europe for the last couple millennia, locked up in the sanctum sanctorium of some grand high muckety-muck religious order that doesn't tolerate anyone asking questions about who they are, what they do, or what they have in the vault.
So some !@#$bag from the Legion decides it would be cool to crash the party and take a bunch of these artifacts, because there's got to be something in there that would help him deal with that pesky Red Alchemist once and for all. And he finds this key, and the key takes him over, and marches his bad guy !@#$ down to an island that just happens to be returning to the world once again that very day. And...
Okay, I figure you got the point by now. Key gets lock unlocked. Forgotten, unhappy Etruscan deities come out and see the world for the first time in over 2000 years. Not-happiness ensues. A simple plan gets stamped out.
So I get this phonecall at 5 in the !@#$ AM on a Friday, after a full night of drinking, banging ladyboys, and trying to find out what happened to the Thunderball on Thursday, telling me that someone who looks like something from Quake is smashing what's left of the Parthenon. Oh, and the Colosseum is being used as a staging ground for what looks like the mythological invasion of Europe.
Do I have a few hours to spare?
And that, my friends, is why you're having problems remembering the last few days so well. Gods that have not been adequately remembered nor dealt with were loose in the world, !@#$ !@#$ up like it was going out of style.
Mythological beasts ran loose in the streets. Weather patterns went every which way. Seas boiled, mountains melted, dogs and pigs got friendly. Ichor flew across the clouds and spouted miracles, some darker than others, and I'm told they could hear the fighting from the next star cluster over.
It took every magician, every god, and just about every divine name in my little black book to put the genie back in the bottle (if you'll excuse that expression, given that the pre-Islamic deities of the Middle East were real hard sells on aiding us after the last few years).
But, in the end end, after 96 non-stop hours of fighting divine things I didn't know we'd forgotten, we've won, and the world is back to normal. Mostly.
Except for London, for which I profusely apologize, even though that was not my !@#$ fault, either. If it helps any things should blow over in another day or so, once everyone who was under (REDACTED)'s control realizes they've got better things do to than burn down their own !@#$ neighborhoods.
Like go see Attack the Block, or something. Tell 'em SPYGOD sent you
(SPYGOD is listening to A Strange Day (The Cure) and mainlining the java)
No comments:
Post a Comment