Ten Years Before the King Agua War

(The following letter was found in the ruins of Lollipop City after the Zombie Apocalypse.)

To Mullah Nasrudin,

Lollipop City, 12^th day of November of the 1^st Year of King Agua.

Dear Mullah Nasrudin, 

King Agua’s War has ended and now, the preamble of a long and peaceful era is upon us. I can see with great clarity that unless something terrible happens, our new leader will bring in peace and prosperity for all, for his recent decisions have demonstrated a high level of ethical and generous tendencies. I hope for the best.  

You still do not know me, but I know of you and of your mission, and I wish to help you with it, for I have an interesting story to tell you, and I know that you are bound to write all the stories in your book of stories about our race and our times and our world. Some day, your histories will be read and appreciated by the inheritors of our civilization, and that gives me great joy, for I see, in your acts, the ring of truth.

My name is Santiago Ruiz, and I am an elf sorcerer currently living in Rasalandia. I work directly for the palace and the Princess Minoreyna herself as advisor in all things magical and arcane. I am well over 2,500 years old, but what I am about to tell you happened to me 10 years before the King Agua War, when Princess Minoreyna was just a tiny 7 year old little calf. I was at the time captain of the Dragon Riders of King Bhag.

It all began in the enormous Rasalandia street market. I was looking for rare and arcane scrolls, as usual, and my dear friend, the merchant Oliver Blackhorse, a pot-bellied human, but a genius for finding just the kind of materials I crave.  He had just arrived with a trunk full or rare and cryptic documents recollected from all over the universe that he had purchased from reptilian space pirates from the general area of the constellation of Orion. Gleefully, I began to check out these odd scrolls, with the eagerness of a human child who looks at the presents under the tree during Christmas.

One of these documents immediately grabbed my attention.

It was an ancient Martian document, from the time when Mars was still a luscious forest, and it was created by a Martian Gnostic Monk, Ahmed Marti, known traveler through time and space, notorious prophet, drug user, and pervert. His writings are necessary reading before graduation from any of the serious sorcerous schools in Nagaloka.

This particular scroll, not one of the ones found in the readings lists for this particular scribe, was written in prose and it spoke of a time far in the future, when in a galaxy far away, in a world ruled Sacred Snakes, two human deities would come to a disagreement that would end time and space as we know it. Oddly enough, this strange document also spoke about a Lizard King who would rule over the planet from a tower in the form of a exiled gnome’s penis-shaped pink tower.

At the time, I thought nothing of the strange papyrus, and beyond the value derived from its ancient and remote origin, I did not consider it of great prophetic value. In any event, I purchased it from the fat human, hoping to get a good price. It was, because of his famous author, a rarity, and surely, even if it had no real value for research, it would be valuable as a re-sale item. The price we agreed upon was not necessarily what I was wanting to spend that day. So I went back home with my precious new find.

Where is this letter now? Sadly, the document was lost in a small fire caused by an alchemical accident in my laboratory. One of my apprentices, a young goblin, burnt dozens of my most valuable scrolls and books when he released a fire-salamander by accident from her time-space containment jar.   The poor creature lost his life in the accident.

But now, after the King Agua war, when our beloved Lizard King was crowned, I remembered the old scroll and its prophetic words.  Curious, I decided a few days ago to travel back in space and time to the Planet Mars of 123 million years ago.

Since such travel through time and space is one of my principal areas of study, it was not a very difficult thing to achieve. But as with all time-space travel situations, I had to prepare, since danger is common in such voyages.

For such a dangerous and large journey, I required a special gate. The most powerful gate I knew was the magic mirror owned in Lollipop City: The magic mirror of the Dragon Man Fuego. He and I are very old friends, so when I went calling to him, he was more than pleased to receive me, and when I proposed the voyage to prehistoric Mars to him, he was delighted.

He really likes to push his mirror to the limits of his power.

Once we were there, in his laboratory under the Temple, facing the ancient and very powerful self-conscious object, I decided to ask him:

“Will you be coming with me?”

“No, Santiago, I can’t. There are aspects of our future that I rather remain ignorant about. The problem with knowing things to come from great prophets is that one tends to want to change the outcome of events, especially when those events are not desired by one… and that can affect the fluidity of Karma in the universe, and this is something I dare not try….” I was delighted by his answer. Fuego is an amazing creature.

He is wise.

Very wise. 

“Mirror, we seek the home of the Last Great Martian Gnostic Prophet Ahmed Marti. He lived in that planet roughly …” I began to speak directly to the huge oval mirror.

The mirror answered before I finished my sentence: “123,851,742 years ago.”

Immediately, I saw what I assumed was my queries’ home: it looked like a large green onion surrounded by large animated purple trees with tentacle-looking vines and huge eyestalks. The place was very animated, and totally different from what we know about Mars now. In fact, there were blue-green skies, all manner of psychedelic forests, and of course, Earth, Mercury and Venus clearly visible, all in a neat little row. The Sun did not look much different as the Sun looks from the Earth. It was intensely alien, and yet, somehow, familiar.

The Martians, in their strange, onion-looking buildings were a combination between an ant, a grasshopper and a praying mantis. There were a few humans among them, mostly in service-like jobs, gathering mushrooms that grew wildly. Reptilians and Greys were also present, but rare.

The Prophets’ home was among a row of similar edifices, in what would be called a “street” except it was not… it was just row after row of similar homes.

I stepped through the mirror a little fearful. Immediately, I felt the change in gravity, although the air was quite breathable, with a weird cinnamon-like smell.

I walked over to the house of the prophet and knocked on the “door”, which was more like the layer of an onion when it opens. Right away, one of the Martian insectoids came out. It was slightly different than the rest in that it had a kind of “white beard” of weird sporadic but long hairs on its head.

I used a “translator” spell on myself to be able to comprehend the series of loud, terrible chirpings and whistles that came out of its fragmented jaws. 

“An elf from the Future in my home? Who are you and why are you here?” as he spoke, he gesticulated wildly with its segmented arms, all six of them.

“My name is Santiago Ruiz, and I read one of your prophecies regarding my time and planet. I would speak to you about it, if I may…” I replied.

“Yes, certainly, the probability that you would come was very high from the moment I saw the end of the universe. I am not surprised. You are most welcome, come in.” said the strange being, half-dancing the answer.

Entering into his private space was a kind of psycadellic nightmare of alternating, odd and perplexing angles, weird dimensional distortions and strange, unnamable colors and shapes. It was so alien as to have no verbal point of reference to explain it’s construction. What I can say about it is that it produced a very strong nausea, as if one were drunk without being drunk.

Ahmed led the way to a “room” if room it can be called where there was a peculiar, but more familiar object. Something I could understand. A crystal ball.

The insect being began to chirp and gesticulate around this object with a strong fetish-like set of movements. And instantly, images appeared on his crystal ball that were visible to both of us.

There was a terrible battle on the streets of Lollipop City, with human zombies attacking everybody… a huge mass of living-dead creatures, seemingly unstoppable by the various warriors who defended the city from them. Then dragons from the sky began to rain down fire and brimstone on the zombies, reducing the entire city to ashes…

Except for the Three Towers, which mysteriously, disappeared in a weird psychedelic cloud. Then I saw my homeland, Rasalandia, and how the zombies could not walk in there. And I saw great multitudes of humans wanting to enter the Kingdom of the Minotaurs, and zombies trying to kill them before they reached that destination.

And I saw Minoreyna, the Minotaur teenage Princess praying for Krishna to appear. And then I saw Krishna and Jesus and Mother Earth and Saint Death all showing up inside Princess Minoreyna’s castle. And I saw how time stopped.

How everything ceased to exist in our universe.

I was terrified.

What kind of madness was this? 

Time had stopped in all directions forever. 

The planets were no longer moving. The suns not burning. Galaxies left their eternal dance to come to an eternal moment beyond time and space.

The strange insect prophet looked at me, tilting its head quizzically. What were his thoughts upon seeing the end of time and reality itself? How could a being hold all that information together?

It was evident that Lord Krishna and Jesus Christ would be fighting for the soul of mankind in a very recent future, in my time, in my world. And it was evident that King Agua was at the center of the cosmic storm. And it was also evident that no matter how clever, no matter how mystical, no matter how powerful, there would be no being in the multiuniverses that could prevent these sad and terrible events.

I returned to my own time line, and thanked Fuego for his help in traveling to Mars. Then I came to my office and I took pen and paper. Now I am writing to you, oh, Mullah, looking for whatever spiritual solace you might find in your heart to share with me.

Your eternal servant,

Santiago Ruiz

Rasalandia Royal Guard