The Girl with No Name Ch. 35

Chapter Thirty-five - Epilogue: The Last Follower of the Ancients

Everything ends.

When the end-fate of anything in the Realm of the Living inevitably arrives, there is always the last one, a final survivor. The last specimen of an extinct species, the last building of a bygone epoch of architecture, the last speaker of a lost language, and the very last person practicing an ancient religion that has passed into memory.

The Cult of Ancients passed into memory and returned to dust, like every other human institution. It vanished from public view in late 1752, but fading remnants persisted for several decades beyond, like the embers of a campfire that was mostly extinguished, but not completely.

The embers of the Cult of the Ancients slowly faded throughout the late 1700s. Rumors persisted of strange bluish-green lights in the forests, along with the faint singing of ancient hymns in archaic Danubian. No one could verify the rumors: every time someone went to investigate, there was nothing to be found. Maybe a few ashes or flattened grass, but that was it. And, over time, the mysterious sightings became fewer and fewer, until they stopped altogether.

The final place in the Duchy to ever record rumors of a mysterious light and ancient singing was in the forest park just to the southeast of the provincial town of Rika Heckt-nemat. The lights and ancient hymns started after the funeral of the council's leading citizen, Farmer Tuko Orsktackt. He died shortly after his 91st birthday, which was an incredibly long life for anyone during the early 1800s. His wife, Vesna Roguskt-Orsktacktna, put on a mourning robe and presided over his funeral. She then relinquished her leadership of the local medical school and research center and went into seclusion. She was never seen in public again.

About a week after Vesna Roguskt-Orsktacktna vanished from public life, a mysterious green glow-light appeared and strange singing began at the chapel that she and her husband had built, decades before, on the southern shore of a pond in the middle of the forest park. The chapel had been built in honor of the families who lived and died around that pond, in a time so long ago that no one else remembered them. Like the Cult of the Ancients, the residents had completely vanished from the Realm of the Living. There was only a single survivor of that community, a girl who had escaped just before the Destroyer swept through with the rat-plague. No one, and nothing else, remained.

Rumors had long circulated that the place was haunted, and that the curses of many years before continued to torment ghosts that wandered through the trees and stood around the shore of the pond after dark. The place was safe enough during the day, but to remain there after sunset was to tempt the Destroyer.

A week after Farmer Tuko Orsktackt was buried, another ghost showed up on the edge of the pond. The new ghost, which seemed to be a very old woman, carried a faint greenish-blue light that illuminated the upper part of her naked body. She walked through the trees and along the shore of the pond, and eventually led the other ghosts to the chapel. She knelt and stretched out her arms so the others could better see the light and find their way to where they needed to be. The illuminated ghost started singing, in a language not spoken for in the region for millennia.

The townspeople heard about the disturbing rumors, but the local Priests strictly prohibited anyone from going into the park after sunset to investigate. "The night at that pond belongs to those ghosts. Let the Realm of the Afterlife surface in that place, if it is necessary. Our Path in Life is to leave those curses and pains of the past undisturbed, so none of it enters the city. We don't know what is happening there, and we don't want to know. Having that knowledge is not our Path in Life."

And so it was. On the admonition of the town's Clergy, the people stayed away.

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The mysterious light and faint singing continued for six years. Then, on the morning of December 23rd, 1817, several of Tuko Orsktackt's great-grandchildren found two notes that had been left for them when they were sleeping.

The first note read: "The deed to the family estate and our will are in the library strong-box. The key is inside the frame of your great-grandfather's portrait. Take those papers to the Church and the Town Council immediately."

The second note read: "Come out to the chapel, and you will find me. Bury me there, in an unmarked grave. Don't worry about bringing a mirror. I took one with me."

The family members walked out to the chapel. Sure enough, the frozen body of a very old woman, lying on her back and dressed in a black mourning robe, was waiting for them. There were two items next to her, a mirror and a silver bowl. The woman's descendants, sworn to secrecy, quietly buried her and returned to their house.

On that date, December 23rd, 1817, the last person with any memory of the Cult of the Ancients held up her mirror before the Creator and entered the Realm of the Afterlife. The very last ember of that ancient fire went out.