Arachne

coming soon

also i am thinking about cutting it back to a monthly series instead.
i am going to try my luck with NaNoWriMo this year and im trying to get my ducks in a row for that.

but i promise im going to do the story of Arachne

also on my list are:

Balor
Baba Yaga

Monkey King

Karkotaka

Hercules' trials

Izanagi

The Amazons

those are just the ones in the que, i dont know when ill get to them or in what order but theyre on the "id like to do" list

thanks for looking

p.s. i will be posting some of my other stories though so check back!

Fionn Mac Cumhaill and the Salmon of Wisdom

I didn't plan on eating the salmon of wisdom. But I did, accidentally. If I had known how easy it was to eat the fish, I’d truly have been more inclined to do it purposefully, and pretend it happened exactly as it had. But I did not. And I did eat it.

My master had searched for the thing for longer than I had known about its existence, for longer even than my master had known about mine. And he had been there at my birth. He was not a fisherman, but he labored with that river long enough that he should have been, were it not for the obsession that undermined the experience.

We had been fishing that day, just as we did most days, sitting on the bank of the Boyne. Master Finn told me often how glad he was for company. I suppose this was true, in part, but I had witnessed the slight grins and shortened breaths as he supervised the extra fishing line. That’s what he really cared about. Though I gladly received the knowledge he had to offer in return for the extra lure I bore.

“Thus, from the nine hazelnuts, the salmon gained all the wisdom of mankind.”

I wasn’t paying attention. I knew the story well. He knew this, and I was never scolded for my inattentiveness. I could recite it all, in his own words, back to him. As long as I kept on my line, or net, or whatever method we used that day, I had earned my keep.

I did marvel however as I sat and pulled the grass, how knowledge could be carried through the nuts of a Hazel tree, sacred or not. I had eaten Hazelnuts, usually prepared with salmon, for the better part of seven years and the only wisdom I had gained came from a wild and feral old poet. Often I believed he might have been a druid who became a bear at night under the light of the moon. But from him, on no occasion, did I witness the use of magic.

Other times I feared his mind was addled.

Finn Eces was a poet of some renown and he knew the ways of the warrior. Quickly I learned them from him. This was our agreement. Whether he was touched by the gods or possessed, it concerned me little. I learned his poems and trained in his techniques.

Finn lurched from the grass into the river.

“Fionn!” He called for me. “Fi- Fionn! I’ve got him!”

I grabbed the net and leapt into the water. I swam upsteam and outward. I cursed myself for my reaction. I should have run along the bank for a ways. I was going to drift too far to reach them. I dove under the surface and battled the current. Maybe I could get Finn to come to me. I stretched out the net, or tried and failed. It had become twisted and ineffective

I gasped for air as I came above again. I saw Finn, wrestling the great beast. If there ever was a time to be a were-bear. I knew at once it was a sacred fish. Its scales shone in the fading sun and the thing was the size of a seal.

“To me!” I shouted.

I don’t know if he heard through all the thrashing, or if Finn’s head was above water at that moment. But if I kept trying to swim toward them, I knew the river would bring them to me. I kept trying to untwist the net.

I could see that my master had jammed his pole into the salmon’s mouth, or gills, maybe through both. Blood was discoloring the water.

They came to me and the fish’s tail beat me like a Formoriian warhammer. Water filled my lungs as I sank and blackness conquered my mind. But it was momentary and I choked back to consciousness. I kicked my feet against some loose rocks on the river bed. I tumbled and banged my joints on other rocks. Before I drowned, I surfaced again, long enough to take a breath for a second round of river current.

The salmon whipped its tail and writhed with fury, but Finn held the rod. Each time the salmon struggled it had less power.

The river bent and I rolled onto a pebbly beach. I got to my feet as quickly as I could, which is to say not at all. And I looked about me. There was a log nearby and I went for it. Heaving it into the river I leaped on it and rode it like a raft. I heard the wood crack as My master and his catch slammed into it. But it held long enough for me to put my hand in the salmon’s mouth. It clamped down and tore my flesh, but I held its jaw and reeled it, slowly, despairingly, back to the shore.

My net had tangled itself around Finn and the fish. It had nearly cost my master his life but it had hindered the fish.

“Well, worth it.” Finn said.

We lay there on the dark sand and gravel for some time. I learned much of the blood in the river had been Finn’s and not the salmon’s. But I was too fatigued to tend to his wounds, or mine, and neither was fatal.

We woke some hours later to the sound of wolves. The wind whistled through the dark forest behind us and the river rolled on at our feet. I was shivering violently and acutely aware of the pain in my arm.

“Finn! Master Finn!”

He got up, checked his prize and begged Avalon that this was indeed the one. I silently added my oblation to it.

“We should leave this place.” Finn said, looking across the river in the direction of his cabin.

I agreed.

He made me fetch the wheelbarrow.

“Too excited to sleep.” Finn squeaked as he saw to the fire.

I changed into dry clothes. Finn did likewise as I set myself on the preparation of the salmon. It took a heroic effort just to scale the fiend. But I got my revenge. After little tribulation, the salmon was gutted, cleaned and on the fire.

Finn dozed while I turned and jabbed at the thing. Over the past seven years that I had been here, cooking salmon had become to me, so familiar, that my mind idly wandered as I did so. But this fish was so large that it took all my attention to not burn the edges or under-cook the middle. I poked and prodded, always being careful not to taste it.

My stomach growled like the wolves in the forest but I did not give in. I could not deliberately disrespect my master. The smell of the meat touched my nose, like the stories of the gods touched my imagination, but I did not eat it. I did not even taste the fish. I pretended to fear it, like an ill omen. And the salmon neared completion.

The thought of finally being done with the ordeal and done with salmon was as sweet to my mind as any meal could have been to my body that night. I tested the thing one last time, pressing it with my thumb. The grease burned me. Even in death the fish found ways to torment me.

“Finn!” I yelled sucking on my blistering thumb. “Come eat your damned fish!”

 I was tired and overwhelmed by the night. I felt my mind fatigue and my body lose its vigor. Suddenly the world was too much for me. I thought I would retire that night with an empty stomach and I was at peace.

“Fionn,” Finn said to me, “have you eaten the salmon of knowledge?”

“No master.” I told him truthfully.

“I can see it in your eyes!”

“No!” I removed my sore thumb from my mouth, “I have not taken so much as a single bite.”

“You-” Finn stammered.

I knew he was right. I knew that all the knowledge of the fish had been condensed into that small amount of grease that burned my thumb. And I ate it. That was not all that I knew. I had gained all the wisdom of the world at that time. My mind had filled with knowledge beyond mortal capacity and comprehension. I knew how the sacred Hazel trees bore enlightening fruit and how those nuts had dropped into Nechtan’s well. I knew the salmon, Finntan, had eaten them and gained all the wisdom of the Tuatha Dé Danann. I knew Boann and how she begat the river Boyne. And I knew of all the men who had tried and failed to capture Finntan the salmon of wisdom.

Finn Eces, my master knew it too. It did not take the magic of the well of knowledge to see the light in my eyes.

That was the last I, Fionn mac Cumhaill, ever saw of him. He bade me eat the salmon, which I did and I left the next morning.

Inanna and the Me

Inanna didn’t sweat if she didn’t want to. Though she considered perspiration for a moment as means of cooling the mortal form she wore. She thought better of it. Utu, her brother, sun god of the Sumerians was tempting her. The sand was crisp and abrasive against her toes. It burned at her earthly skin. She liked the pain. It felt like condensed passion. Hurt, heat and dehydration were exotic.

Inanna compounded her energy where an earthly being would have involuntarily expelled it into the desert winds. Traversing the scalding dunes, she bore the harassment. She was the goddess of sex. There were ways of getting even.

Eridu was close anyway. She wouldn’t have to travel far.

Inanna smiled as she and her servant approached the city walls. A small contingent of militiamen huddled in the entrance, against the wall, where the sand had accumulated in tiny mounds. They dropped their triangular dice and jumped to their feet as the pair of women approached.

The sentries’ lips were dry and their tongues scrapped around in their mouths as they tried to find a proper way to address the princess. That is what they thought she must be at least. Impossibly white robes hung loosely around her neck, exposing her chiseled collarbone. Her dress was laced with gold, bearing a myriad of lapis lazuli stones. Dark hair hung, part of it braided, past her shoulders. Gold, blue and orange shone from her headdress and carnelian earrings.

The guards bowed, marveling as much at her presence, as the fact that she had apparently come alone, with her handmaiden, out of the desert. But they did not question her. They kept their eyes down, resisting the urge to look up, or over at the board game they were playing.

Inanna left them standing there, bowing, like perfect statues. She imagined having a scene like that sculpted for her. Maybe she would have a new temple built with a colonnade of kneeling guards. The mortals in Uruk would do it gladly after she finished what she set out to accomplish. But first, in the place Abzu, there was a party to attend.

In mortal skin, Inanna had no trouble seducing her father in law. She let her skin sweat a little, releasing pheromones along with it. Her skin had a shine, uncommon in arid Sumer. And he drank like the god that he was. The wine was sweet. Incense burned around them. Laughter boomed through the hallways of Abzu. She pressed once more and expressed her lips.

“Your wisdom is great Father.”

Enki blushed, and hiccupped.

“But I,” she taunted, “own cunning.”

Enki bellowed. “Such a fine daughter.” He raised his earthen bottle and his servants cheered. “I Enki, who knows all things, who,” hiccup, “the holy laws of heaven and earth,” hiccup, “heart of the gods,” hiccup, “who knows all things,” he repeated. “In my name, and my power I give my daughter the Me!”

“I receive them!”

In his drunken stupor, the fool listed them one by one, “truth, the art of the hero, the art of power, the art of lovemaking,” as if that wasn’t hers already. “The enduring crown, the dagger and sword, smithing, animal husbandry…” Every Me, every aspect of culture and knowledge had been in his custody. Now they were in hers. She repeated them, adding each one he had forgotten and naming them only once.

The servants of Enki fearfully obeyed their master. They gathered the Me, inscribed on tablets, in jars and manifest by statuettes. All that night the effigies of human culture were brought to the quay and loaded, for the goddess onto the ship Heaven.

Inanna, with her servant, left their host babbling in his stupid sleep, mumbling praise to his daughter as they moved out onto the Euphrates.

The palace Abzu reeked of debauchery and excess. The dull stink of sand, spilled alcohol and lethargic guests eddied around the quiet hall. Enki woke, cursed the mortality he still donned and moved to take upon his godly visage. Enki felt diminished somehow, weak, like he was out of the mortal breath that he did not need. He searched for his crown, but could not find it. His head pounded. He didn’t bear pain as Inanna did.

“Sukkal! Sukkal!”

His call still echoed the place when his servant was just at his side.

“Sukkal,” Enki strained. “Isimud, good, you. Where is Inanna?”

“She,” Isimud’s voice broke. “The goddess of war has-”

“Where is she?” Enki roared.

“On the river Euphrates my lord, aboard the vessel Heaven. Not far, sailing upstream, only to the next pier.”

“Where are the Me?” Enki lowered his voice as he sat near an altar.

“With her, my lord.”

“Go.” Enki sounded terrible, like a beast of the world below. He growled with the growing wrath of an angry god. “Take the enkum!”

Isimud hurriedly obeyed and he rode through the city on the coarse backs of the horrible creatures. With bestial vigor, they howled as they overtook the boat of heaven.

“Return the Me,” Ismud ordered in the name of his god. “And you may go back to your city Uruk in peace.”

“Enki is a liar!” Inanna cried. “He has betrayed me! Enki is not a god who knows all things.”

The wet hair of the enkum beasts reeked as they clutched the plies of the Heaven. They scratched at its bow and rocked it from side to side. They pushed it backward toward Eridu and Enki.

“My sukkal, Ninshuber, faithful to me, my champion,” holding one of the stolen Me, Inanna roused her servant. “Save the Boat of Heaven.”

New power surged through Ninshuber. Her mind enlightened and her body augmented with divinity, she slashed the air above the beasts and screamed with the motion. Hot streaks of power hung in the air. The force of them together rent through the thick enkum flesh. Her hands arced toward the sky above her, and the servant heaved the beasts from the water and flung them, with Isimud, back to Abzu.

“My-” Isimud said.

“Go, again!” Enki seethed, “With the Eru!”

A legion of giants, air-bound churned the river with their beating wings as they caught up to the Boat of Heaven. They reached for the sails and mast of the ship seeking to turn or sink it. Inanna bestowed a second Me on Ninshuber and she battled the giants. The sukkal, with colossal strength and speed tore off the arms of the nearest giant. She plucked out the wings of another and dropped him over the side. Ninshuber grappled as the piled on her, ripping them apart. The water-space of Dulma churned with bobbing and bloody appendages as the rest of the giants fled.

Enki raged in Eridu as his sukkal reported back. Enki sent his servant again, with an army of Lahama. Isimud torpedoed through the water with a phalanx of sea serpents, in pursuit of the Boat of Heaven. The swarm dove beneath the ship and shot upward, bearing it out of the water. They writhed and squirmed over each other, and began carrying the ship back toward Eridu. Ninshuber set herself upon the monsters. Her slashing arms stopped on the thousands of scales. Again Inanna gifted her consort the power of a Me and Ninshuber flew through the air. Twisting and dancing around the nest of sea-snakes, she sheared the scales from the Lahama then severed off their heads and tails. Unscathed and un-bloodied she landed, dry, on the Boat of Heaven. Inanna let Isimud flee back to Abzu.

Isimud returned by command with the kugalgal, the shrieking dragon. It opened its mouth and sent a wave of force to rip the skin from their bones. Ninshuber received the Me to withstand it and the blast passed over them like a calm breeze. The dragon circled in the air, yelling, calling forth waves from the river to drown them. The dragon’s roars ripped the rocks from the shore and catapulted them at the ship. But the boat remained protected. Furious, the kugalgal dove at Ninshuber. She tore out its tongue and cast it into the water. The beast flailed and writhed in agony. Ninshuber pulled its jaw in two and with its dying breath it leaped from the ship and flew off to die.

Enki’s fifth trial was the enunun and the Boat of Heaven survived. Throughout the night Ninshuber and Inanna battled demons and beasts. They sliced through flesh with blue light. They ripped away claws and horns. They shocked, burned and froze every foe Enki sent. And they were almost to Uruk.

A gang of men, Enki’s greatest assassins, the watchmen of the Iturungal Canal sat quietly and waited for the goddess and her warrior. Her brother Utu was gone, leaving night in his place. With the power of the stolen Me and the Me Inanna already possessed the goddess and her sukkal had kept themselves unspotted from the gore of the day. And they were alert.

Against the current the Boat of Heaven passed through the Iturungal Canal. Shadows slipped into the cracks and corners of their boat. The first assassin stabbed at Inanna but Ninshuber was there. She twisted his arms and sank the dagger into his heart. His body dispersed into shadow. Assassins leapt at their targets all at once, daggers aimed perfectly. Inanna began to shine. Silver light radiated from her skin and robes. No blade so much as pricked either of the women. Instead they turned, sticking another assassin or evaporating into dark mist. Inannas light burned away at them and soon the night was clear.

“Queen,” Ninshuber spoke, “Let thy glory shine in Uruk. Let thy power brighten the night of man and let the people rejoice when the Boat of Heaven enters the gate of Uruk.”

Inanna smiled and put her arms around Ninshuber and hugged her.

When the Boat of Heaven came into the white harbor the people of Uruk gathered. They flocked toward the ship and marveled as Inanna presented to them the Me. Her people unloaded them astonished as the knowledge of the gods filled them. Through the city they passed around the tablets, opened the jars and esteemed the statues. And more Me that Inanna had stolen appeared. The people sang and danced in the streets and praised their goddess as all the aspects of culture were imparted to the mortals.

Then Enki appeared. The crowds halted and silence drew over them like the mists of the assassins. The god gazed at Inanna. Then he turned and looked out over the city. He turned and looked at the people as they cowered.

“In the name of Enki, god of wisdom and in my power!” Enki bawled. “In the name of Azbu,” He paused breathing deeply. “Let the Me you have taken from me, be kept in the holy shrine of Uruk. Let Uruk prosper as allies of Eridu. Let mankind and Uruk be great!”

The Mortal Sister

The hero crumbled to the ground. He was going to die. The monster had him. She struck a blow to his knees. Another to his back. His body obeyed, as if commanded by the monster, to fly, across the grotesque reliquary of her solace. The wind had left him. And with it his fate. He knew the battle had ended.

His friends were still wandering her lair, fear consuming them. Each searched the labyrinthine halls, separate and alone. They had been tricked, duped by the monster’s cunning. How could they have been so careless? Their foe had had ages of solitude to let her madness fester. How were they so naive to think they could best her?

Every would-be hero that had ever trespassed her home was now dead. None had ever returned. Their bodies were strewn about like monuments of her power, shrines to her hatred. The grim garden that was her home was matched only by her aspect. The fallen were memorials to her, warding away the cowardly, and tempting the foolish. She was terrible and cruel.

The hero pulled his legs, one by one, into a natural position. He sat, destitute, and panting against a pillar. His strength had failed him. His valor betrayed him. He checked the small pouch at his side. It still held a single golden coin. There was at least some solace. He put one hand on it, taking comfort in the money. At least after his last breath escaped him, he could pay the ferryman passage into hell.

The hero wished he could warn his friends. He would scream for them to turn back. He would have them return home, return his sword and shield to his mother. At least then maybe she would know he had tried. She might have found comfort in his death, will in his story. But she would never be free.

Anger was fire inside him. Anger was ice inside the monster. It fueled her pain and scraped against her fragile sanity. She craved to feel the crunch of his bones against her again.  She coveted the warmth in his blood. She smiled as she searched for her prey. She had slammed him across her cathedra, off the dais of her throne and into some recess of her temple.

The hero had managed to scramble away as she recoiled, invigorated by the blow. She screeched as he clamored for safety. Why forgo the inevitable? Belief was now no more useful to him than the layer of dust that coated the chamber. He had disturbed it with his arrogance. His pride clashed with the scene like a sword through a mirror.

The monster called for him by name. She taunted him as she slithered around the columns and corpses. She tempted him to betray his friends. To give up the last glimmer of hope he possessed.

He abandoned the dignity of his position and clutched his sword. He pulled his shield over his eyes like a blanket. The hammered bronze was glinting from his fading torchlight. Even the flicker of the tiny flame was dying. But the monster lingered. The vault became silent.

The stygian foe explored her familiar halls. The finely polished marble gave way to terrific volcanic formations and cavernous growths. The natural spikes leered at the questers as if nature had placed them with subterfuge. It felt as if the heavens had planned this moment, as if the earth had crafted them, ages before, for this purpose alone. The cave had no other purpose than to stand as a forgotten tomb.

The monster struck with her eyes closed. She wrenched the head from its supple shoulders and cast it aside imagining the horror forever engraved on his face. Bow and arrow knocked the ground. She refused to release the body. She wrapped her arms around the figure and shattered the bones. Somehow the feel of them snapping underneath the flesh reminded her of a lifetime past. She stood the broken man, like a marionette on its feet, eyed it approvingly and left it standing on its feet.

The second adventurer shivered from fright as he heard the rough sliding of scales across the thin sea of dust. Panic and tension collided inside him. He swung his sword in wide sweeping circles around him. His hand shook as his blade clanged against stone. His arm outstretched in a perfect gruesome posture, the monster attacked.

She rammed into him with her body. Chests pressed together, pinning him against stone. He screamed as his skeleton and bowels ruptured. The beast breathed in deeply. The man became silent, another statuesque testament to the evil that had become her.

The last companion was a woman. She was pretty, golden hair with a strong but feminine body. The monster grabbed her by the neck from behind. She squeezed. The girl gripped the monster’s putrid wrists. Their eyes locked. Neither turned away until the victims legs stopped kicking and hung, already beginning to stiffen. The monster pulled her arms free from the rigid grip that held them. There was reminiscence in the ways she had been held. Something again of a former life.

She dragged the body with her. Perhaps she held special meaning to the hero. The beast moved, leaving great streaks in the dust behind her. She could already smell the hero. She could feel his heat dissipating in her frigid den. She could sense the pulsing in his chest. It grew more rapid as she approached. He could sense her too.

The hero prayed in his heart. The gods had led him on. They had led him to believe. They had given him gifts. But now he was forsaken. So great was their betrayal that now, even in the very moment of his demise he prayed to them. He no longer even possessed his own will as he once had. All was lost.

The torch across the hall diminished to nothingness. As the last of the light fled from him he saw the monster.

She felt a strange presence inside her. Something with which she had once been familiar. Though she had known it once before it was a sharp, new sensation. Just as it had been last time. But then it had been lower. She let go of her load. Time fell from her perception. Her memories flooded her vision. For just an instant, her life as a girl came back to her. She was fair. Perfect skin, lusciously molded. Her hair was golden. She was raped.

The man had seduced her, but might have had her willingly. That was not his way. He hurt her. He put evil inside her. And she was a monster. She was hated. She was feared. Not even her sisters came to her. They mourned her but they rejected her. This is what she had become. A monster.

The corpse of the girl she had now destroyed crashed to the ground. The hero screamed. The sword exited her neck. The room spun as her head rolled to the floor. She saw her body fall. She saw her children spout fourth from her neck. She saw the hero looking at her, through the reflection in his shield.