Haiku
Jedi Master
The Stone Emissary & The Water Enchanter …
Throughout history there are stories about certain people that can move large rocks and boulders. Civilizations like the Egyptians, Mayan’s, Aztek’s and even the people of easter island. They had the knowledge, given to them or passed along through their lineage of how to make stone moving a minor event. Knowledge of these people was easily forgotten but retained by the priests of the time and passed down throughout the ages.
To move a sizable stone, you need a thorough understanding of the composition and structure of the material. You have to have knowledge right down to the smallest element of it. And everything vibrates, you need to understand how to affect the material by varying these fundamental particulates and their oscillation. Each stone type vibrates differently, and it takes another with all materials in it to hear the others frequency. This all-encompassing stone is not from this world but comes from space, very few have been found.
Timing is everything, you cannot move a stone during a developing moon, this can only happen right after its peak, near the beginning of its declining mode and only last a few days.
Some of the ways to move a stone can be done during these times. Like reflowing, you can change the vibration of the solid to a liquid, but this also take into effect the ability to move and reshape liquids, more knowledge. A common method is utilizing density moves, it is another method where you pass the material through a higher density and back in an alternate location, this only works for close range moves, about as far as you could throw a stone.
Contraction is another method where an individual can shrink the material in size and mass and then restore it in another location, this is one of the most hazardous ways to move a stone. Where most methods to move stone can be done all night long, contraction can only be done for a few hours in the middle of the peak night and can sometimes catch you off-guard on the duration. One must shrink the material, move it and restore it in the time available. If you fail to restore it, the material will do it all by itself likely crushing the carrier in the process. If you ever have seen a stone, carved into some figurehead or just some rectilinear shape, that has been left in the middle of a road or transport path, it is probably because this stone returned to size before it got to its destination. Underneath it is probably the remains of the emissary that was transporting it.
Beyond all of this knowledge there is one more item you need to be an emissary, that is belief. You have to believe that you can do this with all of your heart or this exertion will fail. For anyone else to be there during the moving of the stone, they need this same level of understanding, knowledge and belief, or the mover will not be able to produce results. For that reason, the stone emissary works alone. Leto was one of these, a stone emissary.
He lived with a woman named Mariana, her name meant softness and tenderness but that is not how she was treated. She an outcast of the local village because she could make things happen primarily around water. It was not her fault, it turns out it was as natural to her as breathing, and she has had it since infancy. It started modestly as water swirling in a cup but before ten, she was able to move the water in the stream that ran through the village. She was almost deemed a witch. Leto found her at age twelve right after the village ejected her, he joined with her when she was sixteen and have lived as husband and wife all this time in a structure of his own building in the wilds of the forest.
The trees are dense in this part of the forest, mostly gumbo and crabwood, it limits the light at ground level, but it also keeps some of the low-lying foliage’s back. The problem here is the howler monkeys, the tops of the trees are theirs and for longer than man has been here, you were not getting rid of them. So to live here you had work out a relationship with them, it took time but eventually some of these ones ended up being pet-like, damn intelligent pets with one hell of an alarm.
This is where Leto put his house, half-built into the hillside, a bear cave that he had to clean and open up to live in. He chose this location as the hillside was mostly nickel ore and with his abilities, he could make the interior smoothened and of course it was metallic blue because of the nickel content, but it took time to keep it that way because of the flaking. Leto was weekly if not daily binding the rocks back together. Material he removed from inside the cave was well used to make a wrap-around doorway that was invisible if you looked straight-on at it. A nice item was that being in the woods and deep in the rocks itself made this one cool house, not great in size, only one room with a curtain to separate the sleeping area, a straw covered stone pedestal.
Leto made everything from stone furnishings, tools and his atlatl weapon that he used for hunting. All of the tools they used in the garden were his creations, modeled from existing tools of the time. But his atlatl weapon was his finest creation, a short staff, one end was a grip with finger grooves that matched Leto’s hand, the other end had a cup for the end of the spears, he made them too. The thrown spear was a five-foot-long slender piece of stone, he had four of them that he retrieved and reused.
And all the tools and weapons were made of a special black material, like obsidian but opaquer. This material that he used was not of this world, but it contained all the materials used to make this world, and a few others that were alien to it here. It comes from the sky, space debris sent to those who need it, like Leto. He found some fragments when he was young and kept them for years until he learned what they actually were. His first tool was a hammer a mere one inch long and a tonal disk only a half the diameter of the hammer head, but it was how he found more of the space rock. First it was strong and harder than any material on this world and Leto could vary the density of it to make tools heavier. Like the garden hoe, it was heavy but worked so well in tilling up the dirt. The handle was the issue with it, the head was metal, the handle was wood. He just couldn’t find a stick from the forest that would last.
From the same knowledge that he built the small hammer with, he built the forge. It had a two-foot-long wooden handle through a huge hammer head, a cylinder one foot long and half that in diameter. It looked heavy but it wasn’t, that was because it had a definite purpose. One end of the hammer head was flat, the other had a built-in disc of the same material, just smaller than the head diameter. The disk could be removed and set on a stone, then you hit it with the hammer and the sound the disk was reverberating told an emissary what and where the material was, but only if they were trained, well trained. Leto had been there a while and with his forge he knew just about everything that was hidden in the local area.
He did find out a few things from using the forge. The ground he was on had been through turmoil many times. It had been crushed, stretched and eventually sunk into it current shape. Through all this turmoil many things were brought up to the surface and this is what he found in his area. There was everything from granite to quartz, even some lemurian crystals from a time long ago. But the major items were the large gemstone geodes intermingling with gold and silver deposits. Leto never told anyone about these items, not even Mariana.
But that didn’t matter as it was nice here, material items didn’t matter and no one bothered you, just the howls of the monkey for complaints. And the house, it stayed cool in the summer even with a fire going to cook dinner, it was quite typical to need a warm-up in there. Inside Leto had fashioned all the furnishings that included a table and two chairs made from stone that sat near the fireplace, that was the largest item in the house. Of course, it was made of stone and some fantastic stonework that only Leto could have put together like it was. It sat in the corner of the room and extended six feet both ways and once the stone got warm it spread heat throughout the house.
They also had a garden, Mariana worked the ground, the howlers protected it, that was as long as they produced enough to share with the monkeys. They grew acorn, honeynut and kabocha squash, corn, chili peppers and four types of beans although the monkeys never ate the beans or peppers. The core seeds came from the three sisters, an agriculture group that spread across Central America of that time. The garden wasn’t big by any means, most of it was corn that was grown twice a year, but it was a great supplement to the fruit of the area. It was done in a clearing on a hill that he terraced with a stone wall separating forest from garden. Leto worked the face of the wall into a slithering snake that went all the way around the garden as a guardian and protector. The snake was amazing, scales were not just traced onto the surface, they were overlapping like they were on a real snake. Leto said it was to appease the god Quetzalcóatl and the garden showed it in its splendid growth and food output.
The local fruit was special, it is what the howlers mostly ate, all you had to do was wander around you would eventually find something. Leto always went out with an extra bag just so he could collect them as he hunted for meat. Sometimes he would come back with dragon fruit or papaya, but guava, plantains and avocados were brought home daily.
The major danger in this part of the forest was the Jaguar’s, the Panthera onca, but the Ocelots and the Jaguarundi were wandering this forest too. Leto found that if he left an offering for the local meat eater, they left him alone to hunt. It was typical for him to only take a few choice cuts of meat and leave the rest for the predator. There was no refrigeration so meat, when they did eat it, it had to be eaten fresh. Because of this they mostly ate fruit, vegetables and what they could make with the Maiz.
Leto, like Mariana, had a natural gift, but he found another that could teach him how to be proficient with rock work, it was a shaman that lived on the side of the volcano mountain. Leto only recently found out that he passed from this reality when it erupted last time. However, Leto definitely had the gift of detail, like the snake around the garden. It had definable scales molded right into the surface of the snake from one end to the other. It was this detail that brought in the other.
Mariana was working the garden today, once a week she had to cut back the vines and foliage that crept into the garden area. Some of the vines could grow dozens of feet in a single week and with the open space of the garden they wanted to populate all of it. She like Leto carried a stone machete at all times as the continuous advancing of the forest must be cut back all the time. A regularly used path can disappear in a matter of days in this area.
She had just finished her lap around the garden, there were a few strands of vine that started digging in new roots that she needed to pull out, but she was mostly done. She was leaning up against the wall resting from the effort when a howler sounded off. She spun around with her blade in her hand, her main worry is a Panthera thinking about making her a meal. But whatever it was, it was making too much noise.
She waited and watched as a man came out of the foliage with a donkey in tow. He was carrying a rod of iron with some leather lacing wrapped around the one end for a handle, he was using it to clear the undergrowth, but he brought it up like a sword when he saw Mariana standing there. He was about twenty feet away from her, she could run but she stood her ground, her blade raised for combat.
The man looked her over, she was in her young twenties, healthy and had grown into a fine woman. Her skirt was ragged, it looked like she had worn it for some time now with many repairs showing. She was in a protective stance.
It was then that he noticed the wall and he lowered his rod. He stood there looking at the artwork and came in close to examine it. He brushed away the dirt and felt the raised surfaces of the snake and noticed that it was done on interconnecting blocks, he couldn’t even see the seams between some of the boulders as he looked both ways.
Without looking away from the stone he said, “My apologies, I didn’t mean to startle you like that. This stonework, it’s skillful do you know who did this?”
Mariana still had the blade high to protect herself, a reem of thoughts passed through her mind. ‘I could lie or tell the truth … that would mean it was done a long time ago or that her man did this … the carvings are too clean to lie, then tell the truth or kill him now!’ She replied, “The man I live with, he does this. Why?” In the back of her mind, she worked some of the water from the watering pool into a snake twisting its way through the corn, and it was headed her way. She had learned to focus the water to make a jet, not some splash in the face jet but a high-pressure cutting water stream. She could cut this man in half in an instant.
The man turned his head toward her with her blade still showing and said, “I mean you no harm, my master not so much, my name is Dominic. I’ve been looking for a stone emissary for months now, this is the work of one, is he around?”
It was a stare down as they both sized each other up, she was leery of any other person with her experiences as they were. But Mariana had the advantage as she had control of water, and her snake was just a couple of rows of corn away. She held it there and let it grow with more volume. She brought the blade to her side and said, “He’s nearby.” Not wanting to admit that she was alone at this moment. “I can go find him if you like?”
Dominic, “Don’t bother yourself, I can do nothing without the Matriarch. Let me go gather him.” He looked behind him at the jungle and continued, “The jungle is too dense up here, have him to meet us halfway, Atun Ha at the base of this hill. I order you, inform your man, have him be there five days from now, we will present our need then. Tell him being there is not an option, it’s an order as if the Matriarch gave it himself, he would send troops here to get him if he doesn’t show, please don’t make him do that.” He pointed at the snake again, “Would you mind if I got a rubbing from this?”
Mariana, “I don’t understand, what is a rubbing?”
Dominic, “Here let me show you.” He went to his donkey and pulled a roll of something out of his pack, he unrolled it. The item was a thin piece of animal skin, when unrolled it was about a foot by two, it had a piece of charcoal with it. he laid it over the stonework and rubbed an image onto it using the charcoal, it was pretty close to the original work. “This works, I can show him this.” He rolled it back up and stowed it away. “Please, make sure your man is there in five days, you don’t want to know what the troops will do if they have to come up here, their a bit on the maniacal side.”
With that he grabbed the rope on his donkey and led it back into the dense forest and was gone. She waited until she no longer heard the beating sounds, then she set the blade on top of the wall, the water dropped and spread out as she let out a large exhale. ‘I should have killed him,’ she thought.
There was nothing that she could do now, so she finished her work and returned home with a basket full of vegetables.
She explained the encounter to Leto, and he said, “Prob-by good how it ended, if you kill him, there’d be others here tomorrow, be looking for their man.”
It was odd how Leto spoke, it was more like slang than anything else. Mariana knew that he was a talented and educated man, he could properly speak the seven languages of the lands including the three dialects of the coast. But when he spoke in his native language, it came out like speech of the islanders, broken words with a lot of accents. It was very colorful if anything.
Leto didn’t sleep a lot this night, he got up frequently to contemplate the situation. When morning came, he wanted to go down to Atun Ha and stay there until this trek was over, it could be a few days to something longer, at this moment he didn’t know.
So, he set up for a road trip, that meant using his one-wheel cart to haul all their belongings from here to the pyramid complex. The cart resembled a modern-day wheelbarrow except his wheel was a three-foot diameter stone wheel that can crash through the lower foliage of the forest. Then Leto adds a little of his magic and powers the wheel, so it took the weight of the load rather than him. You didn’t lift this wheelbarrow, the powered wheel just dragged it, all Leto had to do was to power and guide it.
They didn’t have a lot of stuff anyway, a couple of pots and the grilling rack, all made out of black rock. Food filled all the rest of the cart, mostly corn meal converted into Masa.
The cart had two sections in it split 70-30, the larger area had a cover and was where they stored the Masa. Their belongings and a few of the vegetables were stowed in the smaller area up front. Anything else was just piled on top and secured with laces and ties.
Any other foodstuffs that they had was left outside for the monkeys. Leto then closed the house so no wild animal could get in by rolling the rock around to seal the opening. If it wasn’t for the flagstones and bench in front of the house, you wouldn’t even know it was there.
The day was half over when they left for the lower valley, Leto crashing his way through the forest and Marina following behind, she had filled her basket with her things and slung over her back.
They arrived at Atun Ha right as the sun was setting, Leto pulled out his forge and went to the nearest stone. He pulled the disk out of it and set it on the stone. Then with the flat face of the forge he hit it with a great deal of force. He picked up the disk and held it to his ear and listened. He turned left then right and then focused on one of the shorter structures.
He pointed it out to Mariana and said, “There, camp be set up in there.” he continued his scan of the area and continued, “Much blood spilled … make this place … the rocks speak, death untold. Our camp be safe from evil in here.”
The layout of the place was a ‘U’ shape with the main temple at the bottom. Leto had pointed to the last alcove in the farthest building on the one side. The entry was a bit broken up from the vines growing into the room and it took only a few moments for Leto to clear them out of the way. Mariana went inside and cleaned out the rest of the vines, anything that was dry was tossed into a pile for firewood. By dark they had a fire going and a fruit dinner was served.
Leto didn’t sleep much again, he spent most of his time doing repairs on the alcove. By morning he had both sides of the entry repaired but the top section was irreparable, the stones were crumbled into a pile at the floor of hand sized rocks. He moved them into a pile at the side of the entry, you never know when you need a good rock.
Morning came and now you can take in the reality here, the place has been totally overgrown with undergrowth. The main temple was almost unseen if it were not for the recently cut path up the stairs on the front of the temple. Leto decided to take walk around, see how bad the damage was to the place. He found the camp of the previous tenants, it might have been the man that came up to the garden. It looks like he had about ten men with him, he would say that they were soldiers or guards, complete disregard for the environment. He checked out the fire pit they made with some of the fallen rocks, it was cold but not for long, maybe two days. They’ll be back.
Mariana was on her own excursion back into the forest. She took her empty basket, her blade and the one pot with the kettle handle. Her first stop was to a tall tree that had several strands of vines climbing all the way up into the tree. She cut one at ground level, then she reached as high on it as possible and slid her hand down the stalk to the bottom. She waited and then a trickle of water started to flow, she drank a couple of swallows and then set the pot under it to catch the life-saving fluid. Then she was off again and found three trees that look to have been planted by some past resident, they were lined up with each other. One was a fig, the middle one was a purple plum and the last one looked like some kind of apple tree. The apples were small, but they had what looked like a nut on the bottom of each one of them. The apple tasted good, but the nut was incredibly tasty. She filled her basket with all of the fruit but mostly the apple-nuts and made her way back to their alcove. On her way back, she stopped at a growth of bamboo and chopped off a few young sprouts, ones with good long leaves.
Back at the alcove she tied some of the bamboo together and made a broom which she used to clean up in there, it worked fairly good for what it was made from.
While she was working this, Leto was continuing his rounds. He found other buildings outside the main grouping, they were almost forty feet tall stone structures and totally invisible from the common person, he had to dig through feet of foliage to actually touch stone. He cleared it enough to access part of one of the steps. He took the disk out of the forge and set it on the step and hit it, it rang out to the surrounding area. He picked it up and slowly spun a 360° circle. He found something, at least three other buildings were here covered just like this one, but there was something else.
There was something underground nearby, a void. He needed to get a better view of it, to do that he needed to get higher. Up at the top of the big pyramid was a structure, a room for the king to parade around in or priest that needed to perform their latest offering. Now he worried as places with materials like this were constantly robbed to make housing for the local villages, he just hoped that the big pyramid still had their harmony stone in-place.
He came up to base of the steps and crouched down to look at them. They were almost a foot tall and the same in depth. He thought, “This be wrong, step should not be tall like this,’ he was thinking, a step this big would be for a person that would be twice our height. That would make the person over ten feet tall, he stood up and tried to imagine this when Mariana came up to him staring at the steps.
Mariana, “You seem interested in the steps, do you see something?”
Leto, “Yes, steps be wrong. Get me, I make steps, long lasting in stone, I make them our size. Someone makes these for gods” He looked upwards, “Very tall gods. Where we stay, opening in walls match, tall people. Who live here?”
Mariana, “Who died here might be the better question, I don’t know. Anyway, where are you going?”
Leto pointed to the top of the structure in front of him and said, “Lookout, Forge need to see.”
Mariana, “That’s a lot of steps.”
Leto, “Me thinking it’s fifty, wanna go? View good there.”
Mariana, “A view, yea I’ll go, but don’t let me forget the water I’m gathering with my pot. I’ll never find it in the dark, you know, if we spend too much time out here.”
Leto, “I find, I make it.” As they started to ascend the pyramid.
Mariana, “Most likely, say what happened here, where is everyone? This place is big, probably had a thousand living here at one time, maybe more.”
Leto, “Rocks say water stop, man got bug, rotted. Dead out in forest here.”
There were thirty-seven steps in the lower set, with the tall steps it was exhausting even for some who was physically fit as these two were. But they got to the first landing and stopped for a breather.
Mariana, “You were right on those steps, those are serious. You said gods, the people that lived here, were they taller than us?”
Leto, “Dunno, maybe we find one.”
Mariana, “Not for me, you go hunting for skeletons on your own.” As they hit the second set of stairs, still the same height but only thirteen of them.
The got to the top, they were wheezing for air and Leto said, “Thirty-seven and thirteen, numbers be prime.” Mariana didn’t understand and was too out of breath to ask more.
Leto’s breath caught up with him and he stood up and took a look around. The room at the top of this pyramid was rectangular not square like the one he saw up north at Chichen itza. That one was taller too, but the one feature all of them had at one time was a harmony stone built-into a pedestal in the center of the room. He was lucky as this one still had it, that might have been the amount of overgrowth or the few hundred feet more to move stones. Whatever it was, it was a blessing.
Leto brought out the forge, he took the disk out of the one side and placed it at the center of the pedestal. He said, “Hold a wall … this be loud.” Now most times he does a single hand swing on the hammer, hitting the disk but now like he was preparing to do now. He grabbed the forge with both hands and with a huge swing, he hit the disk.
A wave poured out from it in all directions, like a ripple in a pool of water spreading out from the center, but this was from the disk. It staggered Mariana, it was good she was near a wall to hang on, it was something Mariana never seen Leto do before.
He picked up the still ringing disk and put it to his ear and moved out to the landing around the top structure. Mariana watched as he turned his head right then left, he spun in a circle stopping at points then he looked up and then down. She saw his mouth go wide as he saw something.
Leto, “WOW! I see tunnel, there,” as he pointed it out. “It goes deep … big cave at bottom … geode there, big one, others there, there and over there,” continuing to point out spots in the forest behind the pyramid.
Mariana, “You can hear/see that? Can I hear/see it?”
Leto, “No, disk blow mind. I tune-in with it. Here we go see tunnel.”
He went for the stairs that brought him up there, he stopped to take a close look at the worn carving, it looked like Marduk, but that would be wrong continent, then it had to be one of the Āhuiyatēteoh. He planned on returning to look closer at these carvings, but now he was off to find the tunnel.
Going down the stairs was much easier than going up, thank goodness. It took Leto an hour to hack a path out to the tunnel, they got there, and he said, “Hole here … no get close … I find it.”
Leto went to work on the foliage and cleared it back a good ten feet from the hole. As he got more of it visible you could see it was eye shaped, about twenty feet long but only three in width at the widest spot.
Leto came up to the edge of the hole and Mariana came up beside him. It was dark too dark to see anything in the daylight. But Leto had the solution, he grabbed a nearby stone and held it in his hand. It started to smoke, then glow yellow and finally to white. Then he dropped it inside and it landed below, there was a floor just twenty feet down, it was jagged and course. A moment later he recognized it as a lava tube from some extinct volcano.
Mariana, “I feel water down there, how deep does that go?”
Leto held the disk up to his ear and said, “A mile I see … deeper it goes … cave underground … lake … big geode … block tube.”
Mariana, “A big cave, just how do you get a cave underground like that?”
Leto was still listening to the disk and looking deep into the void as he replied, “Was solid, limestone there … long ago, lava go through … break into water … for ages, water melt limestone … cave now.”
Mariana got up and watched her man, he was leaning and swaying up and down as if he was looking around something. She said, “What are you doing?”
Leto, “Way down, I see … I map in head.”
Mariana had enough of this day as she stated, “Well I’m going back to the camp, get the pot of water. You can join me when you’re done out here.” And she turned and left.
Leto, he was enthralled with what he was seeing. The tube went downhill slowly at first then it takes a couple of zigzags where at each corner is another off-shoot tube coming up to the surface, smaller albeit. Then it came back underneath him all the way to the far side of the temple, a couple more zigzags down then there was a steep downhill section into the cave. If he had to estimate, it might take a few days to travel this far underground, that is if there was a stepped path to travel on down to there.
The cave was huge, it was more than ten times the cleared areas around the pyramid and five time as tall. He could see the lava tube inlet that came from below was plugged with a geode of jade, it had to be half as tall as the roof was down here, only the face of it showed and it was over a hundred foot across. Then there was the lake, it covered the floor of the cave but left a path along the side of it that led to a landing big enough for a pyramid itself, right in front of the geode, maybe enough for two. It was the largest cave he had ever seen.
He stood up and put the disk back into the forge head, as he turned around all he saw was forest, about a thousand feet of it between him and the back side of the pyramid. You could barely see the path he cut in to get there, in a day or two you wouldn’t even see that. And his cleanup around the hole will be gone in a week or two, it was just how the things grew around here, fast and healthy. If he was to do anything here, he would need a path big enough for his cart to pass, but that will have to wait until after he is done with this matriarch.
He cleared his path a little more so he could easily find it again on his way out there again. It was dusk when he came in from his diligent workout, he set his blade by the door and sat down next to the fire that Mariana had going. Each discussed their activities for the day and what they had found. Marianna spoke of the fruit trees she found, she thought that there may be more but just hidden in the undergrowth. Leto on the other hand said he wanted to stay after they were done here with this man to explore the cave some more, said he cleared a better path to it.
They ate roasted apple-nut tacos with a side of fruit, the plumbs and figs, it was very flavorful. Leto called them the Eu of the Cash tree.
Night set in and Leto went out to see the moon phase. Being a emissary he used the moon cycles to assist him in his work, especially the heavy moving. Right now, it was six days past the full moon, the last day of Stout where he can manipulate heavy objects. He went back in and raised a bed pedestal right out of the floor itself, something to sleep on while they are here. He did this by making a void in the limestone rocks themselves to make his pedestal. Mariana knew the shakedown and took the last of the young bamboo stalks and set them down upon it and laid the blanket over them. It was rare that you need a blanket yourself, not here in this temperate zone. They slept, but they slept restless, too many dreams.
Morning came and both discussed their crazy dreams, it was decided that the past energy here was disturbing their sleep patterns. Mariana knew a secret on how to limit this, it was to sleep over water as it can repel the energies here. Leto made a hole in the side of the bed pedestal that went through to the interior void space, it should be watertight, or mostly. It was Mariana’s job for the next few days to gather water as she did the day before to fill it with, easy.
Leto spent his morning looking for the geodes he saw the day before. Deep in the ground were gold veins with ruby and emerald scattered around it. But at the surface were lesser ones like the jade geodes. It was difficult seeing them as their surface looks quite like the bark of the trees in the area, course with stress cracks from expansion. He found five of the closest ones and marked them for later excavation.
Leto returned at noon for a fruit snack lunch. He was leaning up against his doorway with a plum in his left hand and he saw men break through the forest on the north side of the pyramid. It was two bowmen, two men with pole arms and one that was obviously in charge as he had a bamboo chest plate for armor and what looked like a short blade. He stood up to get a better look at them, he grabbed a stone from the pile in his right hand and slid it behind his thigh to hide it, they saw him, and they spread out in a line against him and started walking across the open field of tall grasses.
Being an educated man, Leto knew about weapons like the bows, although they can shoot about a thousand feet, they have a lethal distance of about a hundred, and at that range it is common for an arrow to pass completely through a target. So he watched as the men closed in to about seventy feet and stopped, bowman set arrows and pole armed men moved to an aggressive stance.
The man in charge said, “Kill him.”
One of the bowman stepped up and pulled back his bow and launched an arrow right at Leto, but he was ready. When the arrow took flight, Leto launched the rock in his hand and with a little help it went straight at the arrow and shattered it to bits. Then Leto tweaked its path and hit the bowman square in the face, embedding it into his skull, as he dropped to the ground, Leto grabbed another rock and took another bite from the plum.
They stood there looking at each other seeing who would be the one to flinch. The man in charge went to looking at Leto to his man with a stone in his face and said, “That man you just killed was my best archer, you must be the emissary. Forgive my actions.”
Leto tossed the seed away and said, “What about your man, your bow man?”
The man looking at his downed man and said, “He was just a soldier, his loss will not be missed … I have other bow men.”
Leto, “Then introductions are at hand, My name is Leto, I am the stone emissary you seek.”
And the man replied, “How quaint, a polite man. Yes, my name is Noor, I’m running the security around here, the disciplinarian. I came to clear this site for the Matriarch.”
At that moment Mariana came around the corner with a basket full of fruit, she stopped as the troop of men turned toward her, she dropped her pot of water to the ground spilling some of it, the bowman drew his arrow back.
Leto, “Now, now, now, don’t be doin that.” He had a rock ready to throw, “That’s my mate, you be touching her, you be dealing with me.”
The bowman was aiming at Mariana but he was looking straight at Leto who was ready to throw when Noor said, “Stand down.” And the bow man lower his bow. “But we will be taking that basket.” The rock in Leto’s hand was launched, he stopped it a foot from Noor’s head. “Let me rephrase that, can you show us where you found that, we’ll get our own.” The rock dropped to the ground at his feet.
Lito pointed behind him and said, “The trees be that way.”
Noor was looking at the rock on the ground at his feet when one of the pole arm men said, “Where do you want us to set up your center?”
Noor looked up and pointed across the way at a flat topped platform and said, “On the end there near the pyramid.” And the four men turned away and cut back across the courtyard to the landing.
What they were using was what was left after locals stole the stones to make their homes, all that was left was the base pedestal where it sat upon, a flat about thirty feet wide and a couple hundred in length. But it gave you a good view around all of this site from the temple of the green tomb and its plaza and all around the structures around the main plaza in front of the pyramid, it was a good central point.
As they were crossing another group came into the site. It was four men and a cart pulled by a water buffalo, the cart was stacked high with things, behind it was a dozen men and women tied together with a rope. Noor whistled and caught their attention and he waved them to follow him to the landing.
Leto watched as the procession went to the end of the platform, they untied people and these ones started building a tent at the site, others started cutting the long grass in the courtyard with scythe’s. Guards were there to keep them in-line using horse whips on long rods to strike at them to keep them working. The workers were local natives from long forgotten and ruined villages, lesser people to these soldiers and the same to those in charge, they were slaves.
Leto went inside, Mariana was standing in the shadows, she had a worried look on her face. She said, “Leto, I don’t know about this, those men, their evil I can feel it, and the people out there, the ones that they are whipping what are they?”
Leto, “They be slaves to the man, not equal. Stole them away from their home they did … make them work until they die … not good.”
Mariana, “This is bad isn’t it, Leto we should get away from these evil ones, before they whip us.”
Leto, “That’s not happenin, we can take down army. You focus water … cut them … I pound with stones … we be safe. For now, I talk them out of it.”
Mariana thought about what happened and said, “A rock to the face, that’s aggressive talking, which you are not great at. Should I do the talking for you?”
Leto, “No, they no listen to a woman, not like me. They not know you work water, keep it that way.”
Mariana, “Then I’ll stay low, in here for the time being. I’ll keep a skin of water with me all the time, just in case.”
Leto, “No use unless need to.”
For the time being they watched, as for today there were no more arrivals, just this initial party. Tomorrow may be another thing.
Dusk came and then dark, Leto remembered the man he smacked with the rock, he was still there. He went out into the darkness and picked him up and carried him out to the west side of the complex and dropped him in the forest. He drew up some local stones and buried him in them, protecting him from predators. It was not something that he figured the soldiers wouldn’t do, they would probably just drag his body to the side and burn his remains on the spot, this was better.
Leto returned to the alcove and Mariana was there already in bed, he turned in shortly after that. They slept better this night, no dreams.
Morning came and so did more people to the site. A parade of people and slaves were drawn in, they set up tents, a grand one for this man in charge and lines of smaller ones for the troops. Leto watched as they moved the grass cutters to the northern plaza. One of the slaves, an older man fell down near a smaller temple. Unfortunately the guard was there to whip him into submission.
Leto couldn’t stand by and do nothing. He picked up a chip of stone, it was flat and about an inch in diameter. He flung it towards the guard whipping the man, he guided it to his whip. It cut through the wooden rod shattering it in the process. the guard didn’t see the small stone and stood there looking at it for a moment. That was enough time for Leto to make his way over to the older man and help him to his feet, he gave him a drink of water from his skin which seem to disturb the guard.
The guard had other ideas, he turned to Leto and put his hand on the hilt of a knife in his beltline. Leto was ready as now he carried one of the hand sized stones at all times. He took it out and tossed it up about a foot from his hand and he stopped it there hovering in mid-air. The guard saw this, he was obviously informed of Leto’s talents. The guard let go of the hilt and raised his hands in submission, he was not going to be his next victim.
Leto picked up the scythe and handed it back to the man and headed him in the right direction. He turned back to the guard, the was a certain level of anger in his eye, the guard felt it and turned away to deal with the grass cutters, no other words needed to be said.
When Leto returned Mariana was there with another pot of water, the last one needed for the bed. She was working the water into a small stream from the pot and she fed it into the hole provided. When she was done a little water trickled out of the hole, the bed was filled, now it will just take a little maintenance to keep it that way.
Leto kept them both in the alcove for now, with all the guards running around it was safer here. They had enough food to last them, Leto even got his cart into the alcove with him.
At the end of this day there were twenty guards and forty slaves in the entourage but this changed the next day as a line of men and slaves showed up, had to be fifty soldiers and an hundred slaves here now. The man that he was waiting for shows up tomorrow.
He came in with another entourage about noon, eight slaves carried him in as he sat casually in the carried lounge chair, it was a single chunk of wood carved into the shape of the Panthera and painted thusly. Two more were working a sail to keep this man in charge shaded the whole way. Leto took note of his attire. He was wearing a loincloth with a wraparound hip cloth of magnificent colors. He had a short cloth cape on over a gold chest plate with a necklace, wrist wraps and leg wraps, either made out of jade or garnished with them. He had the standard wrap ankle sandals and a high-top crown accented with bird feathers. He could see tattoo’s everywhere on him, in fact if there was a bedazzling contest, this guy would be a winner, he even had a spike of jade going right through the apex of his nose. He watched as they went straight to the large tent at the base of the pyramid.
An hour later a man that he never met before showed up at his doorway. He wasn’t like the soldiers and he wasn’t a high official. In fact he didn’t look like he was part of anyone here, more of an independent other-serving soul for interfacing with the populations of the area. He was dressed poorly, it made Leto think he was just another slave, and he was right.
He came to the doorway and rapped his foot on the ground, he said, “Pardon me, I understand that you are the stone emissary. I am your escort and orator, my name is Dog. I am here to bring you to the master, he awaits you.”
Leto knew this was coming, the big meet and greet. He got up and grabbed a stone from the pile.
Dog, “Noor said that you are not allowed to carry any rocks, please comply, he’s such a terrible man to deal with.”
Leto dropped the rock back into the pile and the two of them headed for the large tent. Little did he know that Leto always kept four toothpick sized rocks in his belt-line for just such an emergency.
Dog spoke as they walked, he said, “Please do not speak to the Matriarch, you will only insult him, I will speak for you.”
Leto stopped and made Dog turn around to see what was up. Leto said, “I not likin this.”
Dog came back to him and stated, “Please, I don’t want to offend you, it is just that the Matriarch, he is not a nice person like you and me. If he orders your death, the guards have to comply. I have spent years to get to the point where I am allowed to speak with him in his language, he has named me his dog to support his need.”
Leto, “What be his talk?”
Dog, “I doubt you know the Nahuatl, he mainly speaks in Totonacan …”
Before he could end his statement Leto went on a barrage of speaking in that exact language, and might I add it was perfectly spoke. It even impressed Dog.
Dog was stunned but he said, “That’s good, better than my speech. But please, hold off unless it is desperately needed. That could be to your advantage to keep quiet about this, you’ll understand everything that is said in there.”
Leto thought about it and nodded his acceptance and the two of them continued onto his tent.
As they got close, Noor was there, he held up his hand for them to stop and then in Nahuatl language he told the nearest guard to go pat Leto down, to look for rocks and stones, there were none.
Dog said in the same language, “He’s clean, he said that there would be no issue unless you made one.” Leto understood it all and just stood there smiling. Needless to say they didn’t find his toothpick stones.
In the tent Dog went with Leto in tow. It was darker in there, many nicely dressed tattooed men were standing around in the room, some were talking with this Matriarch at this moment.
Leto scanned the room, there were several language being spoke in there, he knew all of them, and followed the conversations around the room.
Then Leto took a moment to give the Matriarch a once over look, he had seen men like this before, more involved in how they look rather than how they appeal to others, especially those less than them. The Matriarch didn’t notice this happening but a guard did and worked his way over to the pair. He raised his pole arm and said, “Tlatoani, this slave, he was looking at you, shall I kill him?”
This disturbed the Matriarch as he was in another conversation at the moment and you never interrupt him, people die because of that. But the guard didn’t worry he figured that his anger would being pointed at Leto.
The Matriarch turned toward them and was about to speak when Dog kneeled down and spoke up, “Please pardon the intrusion, he’s the emissary that you’ve come for, I sure he meant no disrespect, he is Leto, a commoner, he doesn’t know.”
The Matriarch sat there looking at Leto, everyone in the hall was fearfully awaiting his command. Then he waved his hand for the guard to stand down, which he did and the room relaxed again. The Matriarch waved off the men in front of him and whispered something to a guard beside him. The guard left his side and went straight to the guard that alerted them, he took him outside.
The Matriarch waved them forward, they complied and stopped at his feet. Dog went down to the floor with his head hung low, Leto saw this and snickered, but he followed.
The god man spoke, “Rise, I am Acamapt Tīzocic, your Matriarch, pray to me. You Leto, you will build me a pyramid of magnificence. I want jade everywhere, you have six months to build it. My advisor will fill you in with the design.”
Leto started to snicker, it brought the Matriarch’s stare. He said, “You beguile me, know now, I can have you killed without a whim.”
Leto spoke in perfect slang, he said, “I mean no disrespect, but I need to see the designs to be able to give you a timeline of completion. I severely doubt I can complete anything but a scale model in six months. For example, this site here took several generations to complete without someone like me.”
You could see the anger in the Matriarch’s eyes, but he held back for the time. He pointed to the table at the side of his chair and said, “Then look at the design I have produced, you tell me what you think.” There was a level of awe throughout the room from all the ministers and people there, this commoner he was there standing down a king with no fear of retribution. Most here would be shaking in their sandals by now.
Leto stepped away from the Matriarch and over to the drawings set out for him. There was a man there, from Mariana’s description, this was this same one. he looked down at the drawing, he recognized it immediately. He turned to the Matriarch and said, “This is Chichen itza, but the proportions are all wrong.”
The Matriarch looked at Dominic with a scowl and said, “You said this was to be the most exquisite pyramid, a design unknown to others, never seen before. What say you now?”
Dominic lowered his head and the Matriarch pointed two fingers at him and a guard escorted him out of the tent. Acamapt Tīzocic pointed to Leto and said, “You are now my new architect. Tell me what you know of this Chichen itza.”
Leto, “Well this drawing is all wrong, there are only ten major steps in the sides of the structure and they are leaning inwards to support the weight. Wait, I don’t see anything on the interior, what was your plan for that?”
Acamapt Tīzocic started to take notice and stepped over to the plans and said, “Interior, I thought it was just a tomb.”
Leto, “Chichen itza has a secondary pyramid inside, a half scale version of the exterior pyramid.” Leto grabbed a chunk of charcoal and sketched the second pyramid out and continued to the third one. “Inside that is a third that I believe is the actual tomb of the kings, well about a thousand years ago, it was still sealed up when I was there.”
Acamapt Tīzocic said, “You’ve been there, where?”
Leto, “It’s about a weeks travel north on the Yucatan. Your man, he must have gone there at some time.”
Acamapt Tīzocic, “Dominic, he will be know for falsehoods from now on.” He looked at the design and continued, “How long will it take to you to build this?”
Leto put his hand to his chin and said, “Out of limestone, about two years.”
Acamapt Tīzocic, “Not limestone, I want better. Just look around here, the stones are shrinking with age, I want mine to last longer, I want my pyramid to be made of jade.”
Now Leto had knowledge from recent forge soundings, he knew of the surface deposits, but there was not enough for a pyramid. If only he could bring up the large geode from below, it was more than big enough to do this. He replied, “My apologies but there is not enough material in the area to build one completely out of jade, I could inlay what is here, will that do?”
Acamapt Tīzocic, “That won’t do, I want jade blocks, it has to last.”
He watched as Leto took a lap around the table to think, he said, “I got an idea, but it’s not a good one. I’ve seen a deposit that is big enough to make your pyramid but it’s below our feet, in the underworld. I can make a path but it would take days for someone to travel the path to get down there.”
Acamapt Tīzocic, “A private location, tell me more.”
Leto, “It will be my finest creation, it’s something I been wanting to do before I pass to the underworld, one last project. I’ve been to eight other pyramids and have retained knowledge of all the gods and their carvings, I want to have them everywhere. Chichen itza only has them in the corners of the kings chamber at the top of the pyramid.”
Acamapt Tīzocic being tolerant said, “How long will it take?”
Leto flipped the drawing over and started sketching on the back side, it was the path down to his site that goes by the lake to the pyramid site. He said, “I figure that it will take me a year to make the path, then another two years to build the structures and another to decorate it, four years.”
Acamapt Tīzocic stood by thinking of all that was stated, he said, “Make it happen, how many men do you need?”
Leto, “Well, all the work below ground I will do. But I need materials and a cleanup around the hole at the surface. After that I just need a few to gather food stuffs and carry it down there while I’m building.”
Acamapt Tīzocic, “What hole”
Leto, “An entrance to the underworld, its behind the pyramid here, I found it a couple of days ago along with the jade geodes, I’ll use them for the path, and the pool at the top.”
Acamapt Tīzocic, “Pool?”
Leto, “Yes a pool, it will be a secret entrance for us but it will keep the beasts of the underworld contained.” He was lying there but it sounded right, the man didn’t question it so he was good.
Acamapt Tīzocic stood up and slowly walked over to his chair deep in thought. The room was quiet and he spoke, “I give you twenty men for your needs, I’ll leave Noor here with some of his troops to keep them in-line.” Then he waved his hand to dismiss him.
Dog came up to him and lead/pulled him out of the tent. As they walked away he said, “Pretty aggressive, your lucky he didn’t kill you on the spot.”
They passed a spear stuck in the ground, it had a head planted on top of it, fresh blood running down the spear, it was Dominic’s. Over on the steps was the guard that spoke up in the tent, he has been lashed leaving bloody marks all over his back. Leto said, “A petty tyrant he is, met men like him before.”
Dog, “Just do your job or your head will be the next one on a spear.” Dog left him and started to moved away when he heard a voice behind him.
Leto spoke, “Why you stay with this man?”
Dog, not even looking at him, replied while pointing to the head on the spear, “That’s the only way out, just do your job and I’ll do mine, we’ll both stay alive a little longer.”
Leto, “More people die as you wait. What wait for?”
Dog stopped and looked at him, he nodded and turned and walked away.
Leto stopped at the stairs below their alcove and sat down to contemplate the time in the tent. This tyrant, he had some kind of control over all those in that tent, whatever it was, was unknown. But he figured that it must have been because of power, as long they kept this top man happy and in charge, they could also make gains to their power, how sad. The other men that were removed, met their fate, the guard was whipped for speaking out of turn, Dominic died because of his lies on the project. Slaves and the treatment of their own citizens like this eventually leads to a revolt and a total collapse of a society, he figured less than ten years to this end. Sooner or later a real king who cares for the people will arise, but that was not today.
That leaves the project, to oblige this tyrant he needed to comply and build it, not that he minded as this was something he wanted to do all his life, even though it was not his idea in the making. He just hoped that their world lasted long enough to finish the project, that and living through this situation.
A procession left the following morning and camp was broke down. By noon all that was left was Noor with six of his soldiers, Dog and twenty slaves. For the next week they cleared the hole and made a road into the site. Other were already working on the geodes, breaking them down for transport to the hole. They piled shards of jade by the hole, after two weeks the pile was twice as tall as a man when Leto started his construction.
Leto had six days to do major moving of materials, he knew when it started and when it ended. On day one he made the pool, a ten foot wide by thirty feet long pit that was ten feet deep. It had square corners and smooth sides. Jade was nice to work with, it was three times stronger then ceramic and even tougher than steel. This explains why it was used so much for knife blades, axe heads and for ornamental carvings. On day two and three, he made the transition down to the floor of the cavern with steps of jade.
He flattened the floor out by using the forge. He set the disk on the floor and struck the edge of it, this caused a sonic wave that sheared off stalactites and left him with a smooth floor for a hundred feet and ten wide. He repeated this until he got to the downward sections. He covered these flats, reflowing materials with an inch thick layer that was three feet wide which took the rest of the last days. Now slaves piled Jade at the bottom of the first steps for his use.
The plan was to use surface materials until they ran out, it should get him most of the way to the underground site. Then he can use material from the larger geode for the rest of the way. Up on top of the surface he is going to use limestone from the site to make a dome over the hole which aligned with the end of the pool. In the end you would have to go underwater to get to the first steps but for now the pool was empty. This caused Noor to place guards near the pool to insure that no monsters came out of this conduit to the underworld. Leto snickered every time he passed through, he knew there was nothing down there, well maybe a few bats, a blind tarantula or two hunting for insects and other troglofaunal, they were harmless.
By the first year end his path to the site was complete, Leto moved all of his items down below now, that included the cart and all of his items. Dog was useful as he gave him updates on his proprietor, they were still functioning as a society, that was good as the foodstuffs that he needed to survive still arrived weekly. All it took was a transport down to the site.
Noor departed and left two guards on site. That and three pairs of slaves stayed to transport foodstuffs, they passed each other as they traversed the path. Three years later and the project was complete, right on schedule.
To ease the travel, Leto made the arches, one at the top flat and a second at the bottom near the end of the lake. He energized them with the forge to make a portal, all one had to do was pass through them which allowed a person to make the trip in an hour or so removing the long trip that the slaves had to previously do. By doing this, of the jade path from top to bottom and all the structures below started glowing, not brightly but enough to allow you to see the path and structures in the darkness. It also affected the remains of the large geode there, illuminating all of the cave below.
And as expected, the tyrant arrived carried in on his Panthera chair, he was ecstatic as he saw the magnificent jade creation. He had his entourage with him, at least fifty soldiers, a thirty slaves and ten of his higher citizens joining him on this excursion, all of them were walking.
The pyramid was the center attraction but there was more. To the right of it was a full ōllamalitzli ball court with a gold goal on one side and a silver one on the other. To the left of the pyramid was a amphitheater with seating for a thousand.
But the pyramid was what this tyrant was there for. He came up to the base of it, Leto was there to describe it.
Leto, speaking in perfect Totonacan said, “The pyramid has ten main steps, each side has ninety-one steps totaling three-hundred-sixty-four steps and the top platform makes the three-hundred-sixty-fifth step, the number of days in a year. The outside pyramid is seventy-nine feet tall with another twenty for your treasure chamber making it almost a hundred feet tall. On the north face are two snakes that line the steps for the god Quetzalcoatl. On each of the ten levels of the pyramid are inscriptions of Gods. The underworld gods are on the bottom, above that you will find Āhuiatēteoh, Stars, Medicine, Centzontotochtin, Cinteteo, Fertility, Xiuhtōtōntli, Tezcatlipocas, Ballgame, Sacrifice, Earth, Art and Travel god instriptions. Every block has a different inscription.”
He continued, “Inside is the half-scale secondary pyramid that mimics the outer one, I have covered it will all kinds of jade objects that I believe you will enjoy. At the top of this pyramid is a jade sun inlayed with amber, my best work. You get in there by using the downward stairwell on the north face at the thirteenth step.”
Leto stepped back and let him tour the site, of course he was carried by slaves in his seat as they looked around. Dog was there with him but all of the soldiers stayed behind with the rest of his entourage. They ended up at the top, the treasure room. It was empty at the moment but Leto expected that he would fill it in no time at all. But that was not to be.
Dog finally took advantage of the guard less situation and moved behind Acamapt Tīzocic. He pulled out his blade and stabbed him through his neck down into his body severing any connection to his heart, he died quickly in a pool of blood.
Down below his entourage and all the soldiers literally ran up the stairs to the top, they saw the situation and the killed all of the slaves and Dog himself. Leto ran to his hidden chamber and sealed himself in with Mariana and the remains of the food.
Out in the cave a war ensued as everyone wanted a piece of the jade treasure there. The ten advisors died first, then the soldiers started fighting in between themselves. It ended with three soldiers left, they grabbed bags of jade more than they could carry back to the surface. But there was a problem as Leto shut down the portal so it was a three day trip to the top. They didn’t make it as they fought about half way up, there was one winner and he was severely injured. He made it another hour and fell to his face, the bag of jade still with him as he bled out.
Leto and Mariana came out to find everyone either dying or dead, they were everywhere. They rounded up the bodies and lined them up against the wall in the jade treasure room where they set to this day.
But Leto and Mariana, they were set up. They had their seeds with them and they made a garden that grew by the light of the large jade geode. They ate fish from the lake and lived to an old age. Leto passed away first, he was the older one.
Mariana made her way out, it had been twenty years since she saw the light of day. The pool and mound were now fully overgrown, you could barely see that it was even there. She was carrying a piece of Leto’s treasure, a jade mask with two jade feathers in it, unknowingly she dropped it by the pool as she was swinging her blade because the cart path was also now gone. Without noticing the loss she continued and hacked her way out of the forest to find civilization had returned to the site once again. A guard saw her coming out of the forest with a blade and killed her with an arrow before she got away. She died without being able to tell anyone about what was below.
The mask, it was special, Leto gave it the ability to show the path to the pyramid, that is if it didn’t drive you crazy when you put the mask on. There it sat only a few feet away from the pool, covered in debris and vines …
(Not the end. I have been working on another book that mentions sixteen STO and sixteen STS women children of a succubus, this is prep for that story. It is named ‘Cambion, the Changelings’ about the sixteen STO women that are now over 41K years old. On a cruise around the Caribbean, one of the changelings dug up the mask and went back down there. The succubus grandmother told this story to her down at the pyramid.) Coming soon, Haiku …
Throughout history there are stories about certain people that can move large rocks and boulders. Civilizations like the Egyptians, Mayan’s, Aztek’s and even the people of easter island. They had the knowledge, given to them or passed along through their lineage of how to make stone moving a minor event. Knowledge of these people was easily forgotten but retained by the priests of the time and passed down throughout the ages.
To move a sizable stone, you need a thorough understanding of the composition and structure of the material. You have to have knowledge right down to the smallest element of it. And everything vibrates, you need to understand how to affect the material by varying these fundamental particulates and their oscillation. Each stone type vibrates differently, and it takes another with all materials in it to hear the others frequency. This all-encompassing stone is not from this world but comes from space, very few have been found.
Timing is everything, you cannot move a stone during a developing moon, this can only happen right after its peak, near the beginning of its declining mode and only last a few days.
Some of the ways to move a stone can be done during these times. Like reflowing, you can change the vibration of the solid to a liquid, but this also take into effect the ability to move and reshape liquids, more knowledge. A common method is utilizing density moves, it is another method where you pass the material through a higher density and back in an alternate location, this only works for close range moves, about as far as you could throw a stone.
Contraction is another method where an individual can shrink the material in size and mass and then restore it in another location, this is one of the most hazardous ways to move a stone. Where most methods to move stone can be done all night long, contraction can only be done for a few hours in the middle of the peak night and can sometimes catch you off-guard on the duration. One must shrink the material, move it and restore it in the time available. If you fail to restore it, the material will do it all by itself likely crushing the carrier in the process. If you ever have seen a stone, carved into some figurehead or just some rectilinear shape, that has been left in the middle of a road or transport path, it is probably because this stone returned to size before it got to its destination. Underneath it is probably the remains of the emissary that was transporting it.
Beyond all of this knowledge there is one more item you need to be an emissary, that is belief. You have to believe that you can do this with all of your heart or this exertion will fail. For anyone else to be there during the moving of the stone, they need this same level of understanding, knowledge and belief, or the mover will not be able to produce results. For that reason, the stone emissary works alone. Leto was one of these, a stone emissary.
He lived with a woman named Mariana, her name meant softness and tenderness but that is not how she was treated. She an outcast of the local village because she could make things happen primarily around water. It was not her fault, it turns out it was as natural to her as breathing, and she has had it since infancy. It started modestly as water swirling in a cup but before ten, she was able to move the water in the stream that ran through the village. She was almost deemed a witch. Leto found her at age twelve right after the village ejected her, he joined with her when she was sixteen and have lived as husband and wife all this time in a structure of his own building in the wilds of the forest.
The trees are dense in this part of the forest, mostly gumbo and crabwood, it limits the light at ground level, but it also keeps some of the low-lying foliage’s back. The problem here is the howler monkeys, the tops of the trees are theirs and for longer than man has been here, you were not getting rid of them. So to live here you had work out a relationship with them, it took time but eventually some of these ones ended up being pet-like, damn intelligent pets with one hell of an alarm.
This is where Leto put his house, half-built into the hillside, a bear cave that he had to clean and open up to live in. He chose this location as the hillside was mostly nickel ore and with his abilities, he could make the interior smoothened and of course it was metallic blue because of the nickel content, but it took time to keep it that way because of the flaking. Leto was weekly if not daily binding the rocks back together. Material he removed from inside the cave was well used to make a wrap-around doorway that was invisible if you looked straight-on at it. A nice item was that being in the woods and deep in the rocks itself made this one cool house, not great in size, only one room with a curtain to separate the sleeping area, a straw covered stone pedestal.
Leto made everything from stone furnishings, tools and his atlatl weapon that he used for hunting. All of the tools they used in the garden were his creations, modeled from existing tools of the time. But his atlatl weapon was his finest creation, a short staff, one end was a grip with finger grooves that matched Leto’s hand, the other end had a cup for the end of the spears, he made them too. The thrown spear was a five-foot-long slender piece of stone, he had four of them that he retrieved and reused.
And all the tools and weapons were made of a special black material, like obsidian but opaquer. This material that he used was not of this world, but it contained all the materials used to make this world, and a few others that were alien to it here. It comes from the sky, space debris sent to those who need it, like Leto. He found some fragments when he was young and kept them for years until he learned what they actually were. His first tool was a hammer a mere one inch long and a tonal disk only a half the diameter of the hammer head, but it was how he found more of the space rock. First it was strong and harder than any material on this world and Leto could vary the density of it to make tools heavier. Like the garden hoe, it was heavy but worked so well in tilling up the dirt. The handle was the issue with it, the head was metal, the handle was wood. He just couldn’t find a stick from the forest that would last.
From the same knowledge that he built the small hammer with, he built the forge. It had a two-foot-long wooden handle through a huge hammer head, a cylinder one foot long and half that in diameter. It looked heavy but it wasn’t, that was because it had a definite purpose. One end of the hammer head was flat, the other had a built-in disc of the same material, just smaller than the head diameter. The disk could be removed and set on a stone, then you hit it with the hammer and the sound the disk was reverberating told an emissary what and where the material was, but only if they were trained, well trained. Leto had been there a while and with his forge he knew just about everything that was hidden in the local area.
He did find out a few things from using the forge. The ground he was on had been through turmoil many times. It had been crushed, stretched and eventually sunk into it current shape. Through all this turmoil many things were brought up to the surface and this is what he found in his area. There was everything from granite to quartz, even some lemurian crystals from a time long ago. But the major items were the large gemstone geodes intermingling with gold and silver deposits. Leto never told anyone about these items, not even Mariana.
But that didn’t matter as it was nice here, material items didn’t matter and no one bothered you, just the howls of the monkey for complaints. And the house, it stayed cool in the summer even with a fire going to cook dinner, it was quite typical to need a warm-up in there. Inside Leto had fashioned all the furnishings that included a table and two chairs made from stone that sat near the fireplace, that was the largest item in the house. Of course, it was made of stone and some fantastic stonework that only Leto could have put together like it was. It sat in the corner of the room and extended six feet both ways and once the stone got warm it spread heat throughout the house.
They also had a garden, Mariana worked the ground, the howlers protected it, that was as long as they produced enough to share with the monkeys. They grew acorn, honeynut and kabocha squash, corn, chili peppers and four types of beans although the monkeys never ate the beans or peppers. The core seeds came from the three sisters, an agriculture group that spread across Central America of that time. The garden wasn’t big by any means, most of it was corn that was grown twice a year, but it was a great supplement to the fruit of the area. It was done in a clearing on a hill that he terraced with a stone wall separating forest from garden. Leto worked the face of the wall into a slithering snake that went all the way around the garden as a guardian and protector. The snake was amazing, scales were not just traced onto the surface, they were overlapping like they were on a real snake. Leto said it was to appease the god Quetzalcóatl and the garden showed it in its splendid growth and food output.
The local fruit was special, it is what the howlers mostly ate, all you had to do was wander around you would eventually find something. Leto always went out with an extra bag just so he could collect them as he hunted for meat. Sometimes he would come back with dragon fruit or papaya, but guava, plantains and avocados were brought home daily.
The major danger in this part of the forest was the Jaguar’s, the Panthera onca, but the Ocelots and the Jaguarundi were wandering this forest too. Leto found that if he left an offering for the local meat eater, they left him alone to hunt. It was typical for him to only take a few choice cuts of meat and leave the rest for the predator. There was no refrigeration so meat, when they did eat it, it had to be eaten fresh. Because of this they mostly ate fruit, vegetables and what they could make with the Maiz.
Leto, like Mariana, had a natural gift, but he found another that could teach him how to be proficient with rock work, it was a shaman that lived on the side of the volcano mountain. Leto only recently found out that he passed from this reality when it erupted last time. However, Leto definitely had the gift of detail, like the snake around the garden. It had definable scales molded right into the surface of the snake from one end to the other. It was this detail that brought in the other.
Mariana was working the garden today, once a week she had to cut back the vines and foliage that crept into the garden area. Some of the vines could grow dozens of feet in a single week and with the open space of the garden they wanted to populate all of it. She like Leto carried a stone machete at all times as the continuous advancing of the forest must be cut back all the time. A regularly used path can disappear in a matter of days in this area.
She had just finished her lap around the garden, there were a few strands of vine that started digging in new roots that she needed to pull out, but she was mostly done. She was leaning up against the wall resting from the effort when a howler sounded off. She spun around with her blade in her hand, her main worry is a Panthera thinking about making her a meal. But whatever it was, it was making too much noise.
She waited and watched as a man came out of the foliage with a donkey in tow. He was carrying a rod of iron with some leather lacing wrapped around the one end for a handle, he was using it to clear the undergrowth, but he brought it up like a sword when he saw Mariana standing there. He was about twenty feet away from her, she could run but she stood her ground, her blade raised for combat.
The man looked her over, she was in her young twenties, healthy and had grown into a fine woman. Her skirt was ragged, it looked like she had worn it for some time now with many repairs showing. She was in a protective stance.
It was then that he noticed the wall and he lowered his rod. He stood there looking at the artwork and came in close to examine it. He brushed away the dirt and felt the raised surfaces of the snake and noticed that it was done on interconnecting blocks, he couldn’t even see the seams between some of the boulders as he looked both ways.
Without looking away from the stone he said, “My apologies, I didn’t mean to startle you like that. This stonework, it’s skillful do you know who did this?”
Mariana still had the blade high to protect herself, a reem of thoughts passed through her mind. ‘I could lie or tell the truth … that would mean it was done a long time ago or that her man did this … the carvings are too clean to lie, then tell the truth or kill him now!’ She replied, “The man I live with, he does this. Why?” In the back of her mind, she worked some of the water from the watering pool into a snake twisting its way through the corn, and it was headed her way. She had learned to focus the water to make a jet, not some splash in the face jet but a high-pressure cutting water stream. She could cut this man in half in an instant.
The man turned his head toward her with her blade still showing and said, “I mean you no harm, my master not so much, my name is Dominic. I’ve been looking for a stone emissary for months now, this is the work of one, is he around?”
It was a stare down as they both sized each other up, she was leery of any other person with her experiences as they were. But Mariana had the advantage as she had control of water, and her snake was just a couple of rows of corn away. She held it there and let it grow with more volume. She brought the blade to her side and said, “He’s nearby.” Not wanting to admit that she was alone at this moment. “I can go find him if you like?”
Dominic, “Don’t bother yourself, I can do nothing without the Matriarch. Let me go gather him.” He looked behind him at the jungle and continued, “The jungle is too dense up here, have him to meet us halfway, Atun Ha at the base of this hill. I order you, inform your man, have him be there five days from now, we will present our need then. Tell him being there is not an option, it’s an order as if the Matriarch gave it himself, he would send troops here to get him if he doesn’t show, please don’t make him do that.” He pointed at the snake again, “Would you mind if I got a rubbing from this?”
Mariana, “I don’t understand, what is a rubbing?”
Dominic, “Here let me show you.” He went to his donkey and pulled a roll of something out of his pack, he unrolled it. The item was a thin piece of animal skin, when unrolled it was about a foot by two, it had a piece of charcoal with it. he laid it over the stonework and rubbed an image onto it using the charcoal, it was pretty close to the original work. “This works, I can show him this.” He rolled it back up and stowed it away. “Please, make sure your man is there in five days, you don’t want to know what the troops will do if they have to come up here, their a bit on the maniacal side.”
With that he grabbed the rope on his donkey and led it back into the dense forest and was gone. She waited until she no longer heard the beating sounds, then she set the blade on top of the wall, the water dropped and spread out as she let out a large exhale. ‘I should have killed him,’ she thought.
There was nothing that she could do now, so she finished her work and returned home with a basket full of vegetables.
She explained the encounter to Leto, and he said, “Prob-by good how it ended, if you kill him, there’d be others here tomorrow, be looking for their man.”
It was odd how Leto spoke, it was more like slang than anything else. Mariana knew that he was a talented and educated man, he could properly speak the seven languages of the lands including the three dialects of the coast. But when he spoke in his native language, it came out like speech of the islanders, broken words with a lot of accents. It was very colorful if anything.
Leto didn’t sleep a lot this night, he got up frequently to contemplate the situation. When morning came, he wanted to go down to Atun Ha and stay there until this trek was over, it could be a few days to something longer, at this moment he didn’t know.
So, he set up for a road trip, that meant using his one-wheel cart to haul all their belongings from here to the pyramid complex. The cart resembled a modern-day wheelbarrow except his wheel was a three-foot diameter stone wheel that can crash through the lower foliage of the forest. Then Leto adds a little of his magic and powers the wheel, so it took the weight of the load rather than him. You didn’t lift this wheelbarrow, the powered wheel just dragged it, all Leto had to do was to power and guide it.
They didn’t have a lot of stuff anyway, a couple of pots and the grilling rack, all made out of black rock. Food filled all the rest of the cart, mostly corn meal converted into Masa.
The cart had two sections in it split 70-30, the larger area had a cover and was where they stored the Masa. Their belongings and a few of the vegetables were stowed in the smaller area up front. Anything else was just piled on top and secured with laces and ties.
Any other foodstuffs that they had was left outside for the monkeys. Leto then closed the house so no wild animal could get in by rolling the rock around to seal the opening. If it wasn’t for the flagstones and bench in front of the house, you wouldn’t even know it was there.
The day was half over when they left for the lower valley, Leto crashing his way through the forest and Marina following behind, she had filled her basket with her things and slung over her back.
They arrived at Atun Ha right as the sun was setting, Leto pulled out his forge and went to the nearest stone. He pulled the disk out of it and set it on the stone. Then with the flat face of the forge he hit it with a great deal of force. He picked up the disk and held it to his ear and listened. He turned left then right and then focused on one of the shorter structures.
He pointed it out to Mariana and said, “There, camp be set up in there.” he continued his scan of the area and continued, “Much blood spilled … make this place … the rocks speak, death untold. Our camp be safe from evil in here.”
The layout of the place was a ‘U’ shape with the main temple at the bottom. Leto had pointed to the last alcove in the farthest building on the one side. The entry was a bit broken up from the vines growing into the room and it took only a few moments for Leto to clear them out of the way. Mariana went inside and cleaned out the rest of the vines, anything that was dry was tossed into a pile for firewood. By dark they had a fire going and a fruit dinner was served.
Leto didn’t sleep much again, he spent most of his time doing repairs on the alcove. By morning he had both sides of the entry repaired but the top section was irreparable, the stones were crumbled into a pile at the floor of hand sized rocks. He moved them into a pile at the side of the entry, you never know when you need a good rock.
Morning came and now you can take in the reality here, the place has been totally overgrown with undergrowth. The main temple was almost unseen if it were not for the recently cut path up the stairs on the front of the temple. Leto decided to take walk around, see how bad the damage was to the place. He found the camp of the previous tenants, it might have been the man that came up to the garden. It looks like he had about ten men with him, he would say that they were soldiers or guards, complete disregard for the environment. He checked out the fire pit they made with some of the fallen rocks, it was cold but not for long, maybe two days. They’ll be back.
Mariana was on her own excursion back into the forest. She took her empty basket, her blade and the one pot with the kettle handle. Her first stop was to a tall tree that had several strands of vines climbing all the way up into the tree. She cut one at ground level, then she reached as high on it as possible and slid her hand down the stalk to the bottom. She waited and then a trickle of water started to flow, she drank a couple of swallows and then set the pot under it to catch the life-saving fluid. Then she was off again and found three trees that look to have been planted by some past resident, they were lined up with each other. One was a fig, the middle one was a purple plum and the last one looked like some kind of apple tree. The apples were small, but they had what looked like a nut on the bottom of each one of them. The apple tasted good, but the nut was incredibly tasty. She filled her basket with all of the fruit but mostly the apple-nuts and made her way back to their alcove. On her way back, she stopped at a growth of bamboo and chopped off a few young sprouts, ones with good long leaves.
Back at the alcove she tied some of the bamboo together and made a broom which she used to clean up in there, it worked fairly good for what it was made from.
While she was working this, Leto was continuing his rounds. He found other buildings outside the main grouping, they were almost forty feet tall stone structures and totally invisible from the common person, he had to dig through feet of foliage to actually touch stone. He cleared it enough to access part of one of the steps. He took the disk out of the forge and set it on the step and hit it, it rang out to the surrounding area. He picked it up and slowly spun a 360° circle. He found something, at least three other buildings were here covered just like this one, but there was something else.
There was something underground nearby, a void. He needed to get a better view of it, to do that he needed to get higher. Up at the top of the big pyramid was a structure, a room for the king to parade around in or priest that needed to perform their latest offering. Now he worried as places with materials like this were constantly robbed to make housing for the local villages, he just hoped that the big pyramid still had their harmony stone in-place.
He came up to base of the steps and crouched down to look at them. They were almost a foot tall and the same in depth. He thought, “This be wrong, step should not be tall like this,’ he was thinking, a step this big would be for a person that would be twice our height. That would make the person over ten feet tall, he stood up and tried to imagine this when Mariana came up to him staring at the steps.
Mariana, “You seem interested in the steps, do you see something?”
Leto, “Yes, steps be wrong. Get me, I make steps, long lasting in stone, I make them our size. Someone makes these for gods” He looked upwards, “Very tall gods. Where we stay, opening in walls match, tall people. Who live here?”
Mariana, “Who died here might be the better question, I don’t know. Anyway, where are you going?”
Leto pointed to the top of the structure in front of him and said, “Lookout, Forge need to see.”
Mariana, “That’s a lot of steps.”
Leto, “Me thinking it’s fifty, wanna go? View good there.”
Mariana, “A view, yea I’ll go, but don’t let me forget the water I’m gathering with my pot. I’ll never find it in the dark, you know, if we spend too much time out here.”
Leto, “I find, I make it.” As they started to ascend the pyramid.
Mariana, “Most likely, say what happened here, where is everyone? This place is big, probably had a thousand living here at one time, maybe more.”
Leto, “Rocks say water stop, man got bug, rotted. Dead out in forest here.”
There were thirty-seven steps in the lower set, with the tall steps it was exhausting even for some who was physically fit as these two were. But they got to the first landing and stopped for a breather.
Mariana, “You were right on those steps, those are serious. You said gods, the people that lived here, were they taller than us?”
Leto, “Dunno, maybe we find one.”
Mariana, “Not for me, you go hunting for skeletons on your own.” As they hit the second set of stairs, still the same height but only thirteen of them.
The got to the top, they were wheezing for air and Leto said, “Thirty-seven and thirteen, numbers be prime.” Mariana didn’t understand and was too out of breath to ask more.
Leto’s breath caught up with him and he stood up and took a look around. The room at the top of this pyramid was rectangular not square like the one he saw up north at Chichen itza. That one was taller too, but the one feature all of them had at one time was a harmony stone built-into a pedestal in the center of the room. He was lucky as this one still had it, that might have been the amount of overgrowth or the few hundred feet more to move stones. Whatever it was, it was a blessing.
Leto brought out the forge, he took the disk out of the one side and placed it at the center of the pedestal. He said, “Hold a wall … this be loud.” Now most times he does a single hand swing on the hammer, hitting the disk but now like he was preparing to do now. He grabbed the forge with both hands and with a huge swing, he hit the disk.
A wave poured out from it in all directions, like a ripple in a pool of water spreading out from the center, but this was from the disk. It staggered Mariana, it was good she was near a wall to hang on, it was something Mariana never seen Leto do before.
He picked up the still ringing disk and put it to his ear and moved out to the landing around the top structure. Mariana watched as he turned his head right then left, he spun in a circle stopping at points then he looked up and then down. She saw his mouth go wide as he saw something.
Leto, “WOW! I see tunnel, there,” as he pointed it out. “It goes deep … big cave at bottom … geode there, big one, others there, there and over there,” continuing to point out spots in the forest behind the pyramid.
Mariana, “You can hear/see that? Can I hear/see it?”
Leto, “No, disk blow mind. I tune-in with it. Here we go see tunnel.”
He went for the stairs that brought him up there, he stopped to take a close look at the worn carving, it looked like Marduk, but that would be wrong continent, then it had to be one of the Āhuiyatēteoh. He planned on returning to look closer at these carvings, but now he was off to find the tunnel.
Going down the stairs was much easier than going up, thank goodness. It took Leto an hour to hack a path out to the tunnel, they got there, and he said, “Hole here … no get close … I find it.”
Leto went to work on the foliage and cleared it back a good ten feet from the hole. As he got more of it visible you could see it was eye shaped, about twenty feet long but only three in width at the widest spot.
Leto came up to the edge of the hole and Mariana came up beside him. It was dark too dark to see anything in the daylight. But Leto had the solution, he grabbed a nearby stone and held it in his hand. It started to smoke, then glow yellow and finally to white. Then he dropped it inside and it landed below, there was a floor just twenty feet down, it was jagged and course. A moment later he recognized it as a lava tube from some extinct volcano.
Mariana, “I feel water down there, how deep does that go?”
Leto held the disk up to his ear and said, “A mile I see … deeper it goes … cave underground … lake … big geode … block tube.”
Mariana, “A big cave, just how do you get a cave underground like that?”
Leto was still listening to the disk and looking deep into the void as he replied, “Was solid, limestone there … long ago, lava go through … break into water … for ages, water melt limestone … cave now.”
Mariana got up and watched her man, he was leaning and swaying up and down as if he was looking around something. She said, “What are you doing?”
Leto, “Way down, I see … I map in head.”
Mariana had enough of this day as she stated, “Well I’m going back to the camp, get the pot of water. You can join me when you’re done out here.” And she turned and left.
Leto, he was enthralled with what he was seeing. The tube went downhill slowly at first then it takes a couple of zigzags where at each corner is another off-shoot tube coming up to the surface, smaller albeit. Then it came back underneath him all the way to the far side of the temple, a couple more zigzags down then there was a steep downhill section into the cave. If he had to estimate, it might take a few days to travel this far underground, that is if there was a stepped path to travel on down to there.
The cave was huge, it was more than ten times the cleared areas around the pyramid and five time as tall. He could see the lava tube inlet that came from below was plugged with a geode of jade, it had to be half as tall as the roof was down here, only the face of it showed and it was over a hundred foot across. Then there was the lake, it covered the floor of the cave but left a path along the side of it that led to a landing big enough for a pyramid itself, right in front of the geode, maybe enough for two. It was the largest cave he had ever seen.
He stood up and put the disk back into the forge head, as he turned around all he saw was forest, about a thousand feet of it between him and the back side of the pyramid. You could barely see the path he cut in to get there, in a day or two you wouldn’t even see that. And his cleanup around the hole will be gone in a week or two, it was just how the things grew around here, fast and healthy. If he was to do anything here, he would need a path big enough for his cart to pass, but that will have to wait until after he is done with this matriarch.
He cleared his path a little more so he could easily find it again on his way out there again. It was dusk when he came in from his diligent workout, he set his blade by the door and sat down next to the fire that Mariana had going. Each discussed their activities for the day and what they had found. Marianna spoke of the fruit trees she found, she thought that there may be more but just hidden in the undergrowth. Leto on the other hand said he wanted to stay after they were done here with this man to explore the cave some more, said he cleared a better path to it.
They ate roasted apple-nut tacos with a side of fruit, the plumbs and figs, it was very flavorful. Leto called them the Eu of the Cash tree.
Night set in and Leto went out to see the moon phase. Being a emissary he used the moon cycles to assist him in his work, especially the heavy moving. Right now, it was six days past the full moon, the last day of Stout where he can manipulate heavy objects. He went back in and raised a bed pedestal right out of the floor itself, something to sleep on while they are here. He did this by making a void in the limestone rocks themselves to make his pedestal. Mariana knew the shakedown and took the last of the young bamboo stalks and set them down upon it and laid the blanket over them. It was rare that you need a blanket yourself, not here in this temperate zone. They slept, but they slept restless, too many dreams.
Morning came and both discussed their crazy dreams, it was decided that the past energy here was disturbing their sleep patterns. Mariana knew a secret on how to limit this, it was to sleep over water as it can repel the energies here. Leto made a hole in the side of the bed pedestal that went through to the interior void space, it should be watertight, or mostly. It was Mariana’s job for the next few days to gather water as she did the day before to fill it with, easy.
Leto spent his morning looking for the geodes he saw the day before. Deep in the ground were gold veins with ruby and emerald scattered around it. But at the surface were lesser ones like the jade geodes. It was difficult seeing them as their surface looks quite like the bark of the trees in the area, course with stress cracks from expansion. He found five of the closest ones and marked them for later excavation.
Leto returned at noon for a fruit snack lunch. He was leaning up against his doorway with a plum in his left hand and he saw men break through the forest on the north side of the pyramid. It was two bowmen, two men with pole arms and one that was obviously in charge as he had a bamboo chest plate for armor and what looked like a short blade. He stood up to get a better look at them, he grabbed a stone from the pile in his right hand and slid it behind his thigh to hide it, they saw him, and they spread out in a line against him and started walking across the open field of tall grasses.
Being an educated man, Leto knew about weapons like the bows, although they can shoot about a thousand feet, they have a lethal distance of about a hundred, and at that range it is common for an arrow to pass completely through a target. So he watched as the men closed in to about seventy feet and stopped, bowman set arrows and pole armed men moved to an aggressive stance.
The man in charge said, “Kill him.”
One of the bowman stepped up and pulled back his bow and launched an arrow right at Leto, but he was ready. When the arrow took flight, Leto launched the rock in his hand and with a little help it went straight at the arrow and shattered it to bits. Then Leto tweaked its path and hit the bowman square in the face, embedding it into his skull, as he dropped to the ground, Leto grabbed another rock and took another bite from the plum.
They stood there looking at each other seeing who would be the one to flinch. The man in charge went to looking at Leto to his man with a stone in his face and said, “That man you just killed was my best archer, you must be the emissary. Forgive my actions.”
Leto tossed the seed away and said, “What about your man, your bow man?”
The man looking at his downed man and said, “He was just a soldier, his loss will not be missed … I have other bow men.”
Leto, “Then introductions are at hand, My name is Leto, I am the stone emissary you seek.”
And the man replied, “How quaint, a polite man. Yes, my name is Noor, I’m running the security around here, the disciplinarian. I came to clear this site for the Matriarch.”
At that moment Mariana came around the corner with a basket full of fruit, she stopped as the troop of men turned toward her, she dropped her pot of water to the ground spilling some of it, the bowman drew his arrow back.
Leto, “Now, now, now, don’t be doin that.” He had a rock ready to throw, “That’s my mate, you be touching her, you be dealing with me.”
The bowman was aiming at Mariana but he was looking straight at Leto who was ready to throw when Noor said, “Stand down.” And the bow man lower his bow. “But we will be taking that basket.” The rock in Leto’s hand was launched, he stopped it a foot from Noor’s head. “Let me rephrase that, can you show us where you found that, we’ll get our own.” The rock dropped to the ground at his feet.
Lito pointed behind him and said, “The trees be that way.”
Noor was looking at the rock on the ground at his feet when one of the pole arm men said, “Where do you want us to set up your center?”
Noor looked up and pointed across the way at a flat topped platform and said, “On the end there near the pyramid.” And the four men turned away and cut back across the courtyard to the landing.
What they were using was what was left after locals stole the stones to make their homes, all that was left was the base pedestal where it sat upon, a flat about thirty feet wide and a couple hundred in length. But it gave you a good view around all of this site from the temple of the green tomb and its plaza and all around the structures around the main plaza in front of the pyramid, it was a good central point.
As they were crossing another group came into the site. It was four men and a cart pulled by a water buffalo, the cart was stacked high with things, behind it was a dozen men and women tied together with a rope. Noor whistled and caught their attention and he waved them to follow him to the landing.
Leto watched as the procession went to the end of the platform, they untied people and these ones started building a tent at the site, others started cutting the long grass in the courtyard with scythe’s. Guards were there to keep them in-line using horse whips on long rods to strike at them to keep them working. The workers were local natives from long forgotten and ruined villages, lesser people to these soldiers and the same to those in charge, they were slaves.
Leto went inside, Mariana was standing in the shadows, she had a worried look on her face. She said, “Leto, I don’t know about this, those men, their evil I can feel it, and the people out there, the ones that they are whipping what are they?”
Leto, “They be slaves to the man, not equal. Stole them away from their home they did … make them work until they die … not good.”
Mariana, “This is bad isn’t it, Leto we should get away from these evil ones, before they whip us.”
Leto, “That’s not happenin, we can take down army. You focus water … cut them … I pound with stones … we be safe. For now, I talk them out of it.”
Mariana thought about what happened and said, “A rock to the face, that’s aggressive talking, which you are not great at. Should I do the talking for you?”
Leto, “No, they no listen to a woman, not like me. They not know you work water, keep it that way.”
Mariana, “Then I’ll stay low, in here for the time being. I’ll keep a skin of water with me all the time, just in case.”
Leto, “No use unless need to.”
For the time being they watched, as for today there were no more arrivals, just this initial party. Tomorrow may be another thing.
Dusk came and then dark, Leto remembered the man he smacked with the rock, he was still there. He went out into the darkness and picked him up and carried him out to the west side of the complex and dropped him in the forest. He drew up some local stones and buried him in them, protecting him from predators. It was not something that he figured the soldiers wouldn’t do, they would probably just drag his body to the side and burn his remains on the spot, this was better.
Leto returned to the alcove and Mariana was there already in bed, he turned in shortly after that. They slept better this night, no dreams.
Morning came and so did more people to the site. A parade of people and slaves were drawn in, they set up tents, a grand one for this man in charge and lines of smaller ones for the troops. Leto watched as they moved the grass cutters to the northern plaza. One of the slaves, an older man fell down near a smaller temple. Unfortunately the guard was there to whip him into submission.
Leto couldn’t stand by and do nothing. He picked up a chip of stone, it was flat and about an inch in diameter. He flung it towards the guard whipping the man, he guided it to his whip. It cut through the wooden rod shattering it in the process. the guard didn’t see the small stone and stood there looking at it for a moment. That was enough time for Leto to make his way over to the older man and help him to his feet, he gave him a drink of water from his skin which seem to disturb the guard.
The guard had other ideas, he turned to Leto and put his hand on the hilt of a knife in his beltline. Leto was ready as now he carried one of the hand sized stones at all times. He took it out and tossed it up about a foot from his hand and he stopped it there hovering in mid-air. The guard saw this, he was obviously informed of Leto’s talents. The guard let go of the hilt and raised his hands in submission, he was not going to be his next victim.
Leto picked up the scythe and handed it back to the man and headed him in the right direction. He turned back to the guard, the was a certain level of anger in his eye, the guard felt it and turned away to deal with the grass cutters, no other words needed to be said.
When Leto returned Mariana was there with another pot of water, the last one needed for the bed. She was working the water into a small stream from the pot and she fed it into the hole provided. When she was done a little water trickled out of the hole, the bed was filled, now it will just take a little maintenance to keep it that way.
Leto kept them both in the alcove for now, with all the guards running around it was safer here. They had enough food to last them, Leto even got his cart into the alcove with him.
At the end of this day there were twenty guards and forty slaves in the entourage but this changed the next day as a line of men and slaves showed up, had to be fifty soldiers and an hundred slaves here now. The man that he was waiting for shows up tomorrow.
He came in with another entourage about noon, eight slaves carried him in as he sat casually in the carried lounge chair, it was a single chunk of wood carved into the shape of the Panthera and painted thusly. Two more were working a sail to keep this man in charge shaded the whole way. Leto took note of his attire. He was wearing a loincloth with a wraparound hip cloth of magnificent colors. He had a short cloth cape on over a gold chest plate with a necklace, wrist wraps and leg wraps, either made out of jade or garnished with them. He had the standard wrap ankle sandals and a high-top crown accented with bird feathers. He could see tattoo’s everywhere on him, in fact if there was a bedazzling contest, this guy would be a winner, he even had a spike of jade going right through the apex of his nose. He watched as they went straight to the large tent at the base of the pyramid.
An hour later a man that he never met before showed up at his doorway. He wasn’t like the soldiers and he wasn’t a high official. In fact he didn’t look like he was part of anyone here, more of an independent other-serving soul for interfacing with the populations of the area. He was dressed poorly, it made Leto think he was just another slave, and he was right.
He came to the doorway and rapped his foot on the ground, he said, “Pardon me, I understand that you are the stone emissary. I am your escort and orator, my name is Dog. I am here to bring you to the master, he awaits you.”
Leto knew this was coming, the big meet and greet. He got up and grabbed a stone from the pile.
Dog, “Noor said that you are not allowed to carry any rocks, please comply, he’s such a terrible man to deal with.”
Leto dropped the rock back into the pile and the two of them headed for the large tent. Little did he know that Leto always kept four toothpick sized rocks in his belt-line for just such an emergency.
Dog spoke as they walked, he said, “Please do not speak to the Matriarch, you will only insult him, I will speak for you.”
Leto stopped and made Dog turn around to see what was up. Leto said, “I not likin this.”
Dog came back to him and stated, “Please, I don’t want to offend you, it is just that the Matriarch, he is not a nice person like you and me. If he orders your death, the guards have to comply. I have spent years to get to the point where I am allowed to speak with him in his language, he has named me his dog to support his need.”
Leto, “What be his talk?”
Dog, “I doubt you know the Nahuatl, he mainly speaks in Totonacan …”
Before he could end his statement Leto went on a barrage of speaking in that exact language, and might I add it was perfectly spoke. It even impressed Dog.
Dog was stunned but he said, “That’s good, better than my speech. But please, hold off unless it is desperately needed. That could be to your advantage to keep quiet about this, you’ll understand everything that is said in there.”
Leto thought about it and nodded his acceptance and the two of them continued onto his tent.
As they got close, Noor was there, he held up his hand for them to stop and then in Nahuatl language he told the nearest guard to go pat Leto down, to look for rocks and stones, there were none.
Dog said in the same language, “He’s clean, he said that there would be no issue unless you made one.” Leto understood it all and just stood there smiling. Needless to say they didn’t find his toothpick stones.
In the tent Dog went with Leto in tow. It was darker in there, many nicely dressed tattooed men were standing around in the room, some were talking with this Matriarch at this moment.
Leto scanned the room, there were several language being spoke in there, he knew all of them, and followed the conversations around the room.
Then Leto took a moment to give the Matriarch a once over look, he had seen men like this before, more involved in how they look rather than how they appeal to others, especially those less than them. The Matriarch didn’t notice this happening but a guard did and worked his way over to the pair. He raised his pole arm and said, “Tlatoani, this slave, he was looking at you, shall I kill him?”
This disturbed the Matriarch as he was in another conversation at the moment and you never interrupt him, people die because of that. But the guard didn’t worry he figured that his anger would being pointed at Leto.
The Matriarch turned toward them and was about to speak when Dog kneeled down and spoke up, “Please pardon the intrusion, he’s the emissary that you’ve come for, I sure he meant no disrespect, he is Leto, a commoner, he doesn’t know.”
The Matriarch sat there looking at Leto, everyone in the hall was fearfully awaiting his command. Then he waved his hand for the guard to stand down, which he did and the room relaxed again. The Matriarch waved off the men in front of him and whispered something to a guard beside him. The guard left his side and went straight to the guard that alerted them, he took him outside.
The Matriarch waved them forward, they complied and stopped at his feet. Dog went down to the floor with his head hung low, Leto saw this and snickered, but he followed.
The god man spoke, “Rise, I am Acamapt Tīzocic, your Matriarch, pray to me. You Leto, you will build me a pyramid of magnificence. I want jade everywhere, you have six months to build it. My advisor will fill you in with the design.”
Leto started to snicker, it brought the Matriarch’s stare. He said, “You beguile me, know now, I can have you killed without a whim.”
Leto spoke in perfect slang, he said, “I mean no disrespect, but I need to see the designs to be able to give you a timeline of completion. I severely doubt I can complete anything but a scale model in six months. For example, this site here took several generations to complete without someone like me.”
You could see the anger in the Matriarch’s eyes, but he held back for the time. He pointed to the table at the side of his chair and said, “Then look at the design I have produced, you tell me what you think.” There was a level of awe throughout the room from all the ministers and people there, this commoner he was there standing down a king with no fear of retribution. Most here would be shaking in their sandals by now.
Leto stepped away from the Matriarch and over to the drawings set out for him. There was a man there, from Mariana’s description, this was this same one. he looked down at the drawing, he recognized it immediately. He turned to the Matriarch and said, “This is Chichen itza, but the proportions are all wrong.”
The Matriarch looked at Dominic with a scowl and said, “You said this was to be the most exquisite pyramid, a design unknown to others, never seen before. What say you now?”
Dominic lowered his head and the Matriarch pointed two fingers at him and a guard escorted him out of the tent. Acamapt Tīzocic pointed to Leto and said, “You are now my new architect. Tell me what you know of this Chichen itza.”
Leto, “Well this drawing is all wrong, there are only ten major steps in the sides of the structure and they are leaning inwards to support the weight. Wait, I don’t see anything on the interior, what was your plan for that?”
Acamapt Tīzocic started to take notice and stepped over to the plans and said, “Interior, I thought it was just a tomb.”
Leto, “Chichen itza has a secondary pyramid inside, a half scale version of the exterior pyramid.” Leto grabbed a chunk of charcoal and sketched the second pyramid out and continued to the third one. “Inside that is a third that I believe is the actual tomb of the kings, well about a thousand years ago, it was still sealed up when I was there.”
Acamapt Tīzocic said, “You’ve been there, where?”
Leto, “It’s about a weeks travel north on the Yucatan. Your man, he must have gone there at some time.”
Acamapt Tīzocic, “Dominic, he will be know for falsehoods from now on.” He looked at the design and continued, “How long will it take to you to build this?”
Leto put his hand to his chin and said, “Out of limestone, about two years.”
Acamapt Tīzocic, “Not limestone, I want better. Just look around here, the stones are shrinking with age, I want mine to last longer, I want my pyramid to be made of jade.”
Now Leto had knowledge from recent forge soundings, he knew of the surface deposits, but there was not enough for a pyramid. If only he could bring up the large geode from below, it was more than big enough to do this. He replied, “My apologies but there is not enough material in the area to build one completely out of jade, I could inlay what is here, will that do?”
Acamapt Tīzocic, “That won’t do, I want jade blocks, it has to last.”
He watched as Leto took a lap around the table to think, he said, “I got an idea, but it’s not a good one. I’ve seen a deposit that is big enough to make your pyramid but it’s below our feet, in the underworld. I can make a path but it would take days for someone to travel the path to get down there.”
Acamapt Tīzocic, “A private location, tell me more.”
Leto, “It will be my finest creation, it’s something I been wanting to do before I pass to the underworld, one last project. I’ve been to eight other pyramids and have retained knowledge of all the gods and their carvings, I want to have them everywhere. Chichen itza only has them in the corners of the kings chamber at the top of the pyramid.”
Acamapt Tīzocic being tolerant said, “How long will it take?”
Leto flipped the drawing over and started sketching on the back side, it was the path down to his site that goes by the lake to the pyramid site. He said, “I figure that it will take me a year to make the path, then another two years to build the structures and another to decorate it, four years.”
Acamapt Tīzocic stood by thinking of all that was stated, he said, “Make it happen, how many men do you need?”
Leto, “Well, all the work below ground I will do. But I need materials and a cleanup around the hole at the surface. After that I just need a few to gather food stuffs and carry it down there while I’m building.”
Acamapt Tīzocic, “What hole”
Leto, “An entrance to the underworld, its behind the pyramid here, I found it a couple of days ago along with the jade geodes, I’ll use them for the path, and the pool at the top.”
Acamapt Tīzocic, “Pool?”
Leto, “Yes a pool, it will be a secret entrance for us but it will keep the beasts of the underworld contained.” He was lying there but it sounded right, the man didn’t question it so he was good.
Acamapt Tīzocic stood up and slowly walked over to his chair deep in thought. The room was quiet and he spoke, “I give you twenty men for your needs, I’ll leave Noor here with some of his troops to keep them in-line.” Then he waved his hand to dismiss him.
Dog came up to him and lead/pulled him out of the tent. As they walked away he said, “Pretty aggressive, your lucky he didn’t kill you on the spot.”
They passed a spear stuck in the ground, it had a head planted on top of it, fresh blood running down the spear, it was Dominic’s. Over on the steps was the guard that spoke up in the tent, he has been lashed leaving bloody marks all over his back. Leto said, “A petty tyrant he is, met men like him before.”
Dog, “Just do your job or your head will be the next one on a spear.” Dog left him and started to moved away when he heard a voice behind him.
Leto spoke, “Why you stay with this man?”
Dog, not even looking at him, replied while pointing to the head on the spear, “That’s the only way out, just do your job and I’ll do mine, we’ll both stay alive a little longer.”
Leto, “More people die as you wait. What wait for?”
Dog stopped and looked at him, he nodded and turned and walked away.
Leto stopped at the stairs below their alcove and sat down to contemplate the time in the tent. This tyrant, he had some kind of control over all those in that tent, whatever it was, was unknown. But he figured that it must have been because of power, as long they kept this top man happy and in charge, they could also make gains to their power, how sad. The other men that were removed, met their fate, the guard was whipped for speaking out of turn, Dominic died because of his lies on the project. Slaves and the treatment of their own citizens like this eventually leads to a revolt and a total collapse of a society, he figured less than ten years to this end. Sooner or later a real king who cares for the people will arise, but that was not today.
That leaves the project, to oblige this tyrant he needed to comply and build it, not that he minded as this was something he wanted to do all his life, even though it was not his idea in the making. He just hoped that their world lasted long enough to finish the project, that and living through this situation.
A procession left the following morning and camp was broke down. By noon all that was left was Noor with six of his soldiers, Dog and twenty slaves. For the next week they cleared the hole and made a road into the site. Other were already working on the geodes, breaking them down for transport to the hole. They piled shards of jade by the hole, after two weeks the pile was twice as tall as a man when Leto started his construction.
Leto had six days to do major moving of materials, he knew when it started and when it ended. On day one he made the pool, a ten foot wide by thirty feet long pit that was ten feet deep. It had square corners and smooth sides. Jade was nice to work with, it was three times stronger then ceramic and even tougher than steel. This explains why it was used so much for knife blades, axe heads and for ornamental carvings. On day two and three, he made the transition down to the floor of the cavern with steps of jade.
He flattened the floor out by using the forge. He set the disk on the floor and struck the edge of it, this caused a sonic wave that sheared off stalactites and left him with a smooth floor for a hundred feet and ten wide. He repeated this until he got to the downward sections. He covered these flats, reflowing materials with an inch thick layer that was three feet wide which took the rest of the last days. Now slaves piled Jade at the bottom of the first steps for his use.
The plan was to use surface materials until they ran out, it should get him most of the way to the underground site. Then he can use material from the larger geode for the rest of the way. Up on top of the surface he is going to use limestone from the site to make a dome over the hole which aligned with the end of the pool. In the end you would have to go underwater to get to the first steps but for now the pool was empty. This caused Noor to place guards near the pool to insure that no monsters came out of this conduit to the underworld. Leto snickered every time he passed through, he knew there was nothing down there, well maybe a few bats, a blind tarantula or two hunting for insects and other troglofaunal, they were harmless.
By the first year end his path to the site was complete, Leto moved all of his items down below now, that included the cart and all of his items. Dog was useful as he gave him updates on his proprietor, they were still functioning as a society, that was good as the foodstuffs that he needed to survive still arrived weekly. All it took was a transport down to the site.
Noor departed and left two guards on site. That and three pairs of slaves stayed to transport foodstuffs, they passed each other as they traversed the path. Three years later and the project was complete, right on schedule.
To ease the travel, Leto made the arches, one at the top flat and a second at the bottom near the end of the lake. He energized them with the forge to make a portal, all one had to do was pass through them which allowed a person to make the trip in an hour or so removing the long trip that the slaves had to previously do. By doing this, of the jade path from top to bottom and all the structures below started glowing, not brightly but enough to allow you to see the path and structures in the darkness. It also affected the remains of the large geode there, illuminating all of the cave below.
And as expected, the tyrant arrived carried in on his Panthera chair, he was ecstatic as he saw the magnificent jade creation. He had his entourage with him, at least fifty soldiers, a thirty slaves and ten of his higher citizens joining him on this excursion, all of them were walking.
The pyramid was the center attraction but there was more. To the right of it was a full ōllamalitzli ball court with a gold goal on one side and a silver one on the other. To the left of the pyramid was a amphitheater with seating for a thousand.
But the pyramid was what this tyrant was there for. He came up to the base of it, Leto was there to describe it.
Leto, speaking in perfect Totonacan said, “The pyramid has ten main steps, each side has ninety-one steps totaling three-hundred-sixty-four steps and the top platform makes the three-hundred-sixty-fifth step, the number of days in a year. The outside pyramid is seventy-nine feet tall with another twenty for your treasure chamber making it almost a hundred feet tall. On the north face are two snakes that line the steps for the god Quetzalcoatl. On each of the ten levels of the pyramid are inscriptions of Gods. The underworld gods are on the bottom, above that you will find Āhuiatēteoh, Stars, Medicine, Centzontotochtin, Cinteteo, Fertility, Xiuhtōtōntli, Tezcatlipocas, Ballgame, Sacrifice, Earth, Art and Travel god instriptions. Every block has a different inscription.”
He continued, “Inside is the half-scale secondary pyramid that mimics the outer one, I have covered it will all kinds of jade objects that I believe you will enjoy. At the top of this pyramid is a jade sun inlayed with amber, my best work. You get in there by using the downward stairwell on the north face at the thirteenth step.”
Leto stepped back and let him tour the site, of course he was carried by slaves in his seat as they looked around. Dog was there with him but all of the soldiers stayed behind with the rest of his entourage. They ended up at the top, the treasure room. It was empty at the moment but Leto expected that he would fill it in no time at all. But that was not to be.
Dog finally took advantage of the guard less situation and moved behind Acamapt Tīzocic. He pulled out his blade and stabbed him through his neck down into his body severing any connection to his heart, he died quickly in a pool of blood.
Down below his entourage and all the soldiers literally ran up the stairs to the top, they saw the situation and the killed all of the slaves and Dog himself. Leto ran to his hidden chamber and sealed himself in with Mariana and the remains of the food.
Out in the cave a war ensued as everyone wanted a piece of the jade treasure there. The ten advisors died first, then the soldiers started fighting in between themselves. It ended with three soldiers left, they grabbed bags of jade more than they could carry back to the surface. But there was a problem as Leto shut down the portal so it was a three day trip to the top. They didn’t make it as they fought about half way up, there was one winner and he was severely injured. He made it another hour and fell to his face, the bag of jade still with him as he bled out.
Leto and Mariana came out to find everyone either dying or dead, they were everywhere. They rounded up the bodies and lined them up against the wall in the jade treasure room where they set to this day.
But Leto and Mariana, they were set up. They had their seeds with them and they made a garden that grew by the light of the large jade geode. They ate fish from the lake and lived to an old age. Leto passed away first, he was the older one.
Mariana made her way out, it had been twenty years since she saw the light of day. The pool and mound were now fully overgrown, you could barely see that it was even there. She was carrying a piece of Leto’s treasure, a jade mask with two jade feathers in it, unknowingly she dropped it by the pool as she was swinging her blade because the cart path was also now gone. Without noticing the loss she continued and hacked her way out of the forest to find civilization had returned to the site once again. A guard saw her coming out of the forest with a blade and killed her with an arrow before she got away. She died without being able to tell anyone about what was below.
The mask, it was special, Leto gave it the ability to show the path to the pyramid, that is if it didn’t drive you crazy when you put the mask on. There it sat only a few feet away from the pool, covered in debris and vines …
(Not the end. I have been working on another book that mentions sixteen STO and sixteen STS women children of a succubus, this is prep for that story. It is named ‘Cambion, the Changelings’ about the sixteen STO women that are now over 41K years old. On a cruise around the Caribbean, one of the changelings dug up the mask and went back down there. The succubus grandmother told this story to her down at the pyramid.) Coming soon, Haiku …