Author: Andrew R Duncan. Andrew is a watcher and writer from Edinburgh, Scotland. An observer of decline and decay; a witness to the end and rebirth. Writes the Stories of Winter.

The great Earth Serpent swam through the cosmic ocean in a frenzied flight; she would not stop. Every twist and turn and spasm was animalistic instinct and fury, the product of a mind driven mad by the parasites she bore. They were in her skin and across her tail burrowing deeper and sending her onwards in clamour and wrath. She struck her way across the endlessly empty ocean of the void but no matter what she did the creature would not leave her alone. They were her children and she was their Mother.

Beneath the cracks of her scales and the within flesh of her skin cowered the people of clay, beings that one day would become man. Their Mother’s struggle and frantic flight had forced them to retreat and bury deep to the dark recesses of her body, the only place where they would not be thrown from off her and into the void. And in these pitiful dwellings far from the sun and wind they eked out their existence on her flesh and her blood, wishing for a day that the surface may be theirs and they could spread out upon the face of the land. Every generation bore a courageous handful who would venture out from the depths to forever be lost in the cosmic winds of the void, a pattern that had been and would be repeated throughout the ages. And it was, until that moment at which Providence set forth her plans. Providence seized these unworthy beings in her hands and the fine lady would raise them high indeed.

Twins were born unto parents of little note or circumstance. Twins alone were a sign auspicious enough but with just one gaze upon the perfect, nascent faces one could tell that theirs were natures of a greatness which would come to them in time. As the years passed and they grew to maturity the young man and woman grew to be taller and stronger and more beautiful than any other being that had been formed and known by the children of clay. They were loved and feared and respected and revered and all the people knew that the time had come as had the time of their Mother Serpent. One day came when the twins ventured up from the depths and emerged onto the surface of the writhing snake. Furiously did she thrash in the waters and fling herself into the future but this time her parasites and children clung to one another and remained standing. She shrieked in rage and the roar sang out through the depths and all the people of clay recoiled to their homes where they shook in fear for their fate.

Day by cataclysmic day the twins secured their future, mile by mile and scale by scale and they were not overcome. They ventured underground and were known amongst each of the tribes. They were presented with gifts and blessings and slaves as each leader saw fit but they were rejected by the twins. Their hearts were not set upon the riches of clay but only on the future glory that awaited their people. If only these children could see how trivial and frivolous these gifts were when compared with what was to come. Then they would fall to the ground in fear and beg the young man and woman not to carry on to destiny. But destiny was not to be denied. Over scales the height of mountains ranges where winds of speeding ice cut through their flesh to the depths of oceans unending where the waters flowed unerringly, the pair could not be dissuaded from their end.

They reached the tail of their mother and stood watching her wake ripple out into the nothingness over and across the great cosmic ocean. It was a fate she could not outrun but she swam so furiously and so desperately that they could only believe she knew her time had come. Fate had been borne by her and came from within her and it was one the time of which had come to be delivered to her. At the end of the tail they began their work and carved from a scale the spear that would rebuke their mother. On its completion they lend down from the end of their mother and dipped it into the cosmic waters; they climbed upon the tallest peak and held it aloft to the winds of eternity; they went deeper than they ever had before and bathed the weapon into the serpents blood; then they returned to the tail and struck the weapon down with all the force destiny could muster.

The Holy Lance pierced skin and flesh and bone and the serpent mother cried with a passion no peoples had heard before. The people of clay, those heirs of an undeserved destiny, believed they had known fear before but only now did the totality of terror grip their souls and they lamented for all that they had left undone. The earth snake spun to face the foe that dared to attack her and tied her body into a twisting, embedded knot. She bit down upon the prey at the end of her tail and the fangs sank through scale and flesh and bone and her venom flowed from the tips of her fangs into the blood that coursed through her veins. Her death throes were apocalyptic as the venom travelled through her twisted corpse and back to her mouth. The people of clay were torn as never before and even in their homes many died in the struggle of the earth and the flooding of the poison but eventually their mother ceased and they ascended from their pits and began a new life upon the surface.

The twins would reign as eternal king and queen over the people of clay but as clay turned to flesh and man began to walk the Earth, they too would pass into a previous age.