I was never really good at math, couldn’t solve an integral to save my life, division, algebra, and so on… none of it really clicked for me. I suppose I never quite put in the effort though. It was embarrassing, at some level as a Muslim of all things (you know Al-Khwarizmi and the like.) you’d think I’d spend my time making star charts with quill pens, writing some big wall of chalk equations at college. I tried not to let it get to me most of the time. I did well enough to pass my classes and came out of school pretty much exactly as I came in.
I told myself that higher education wasn’t the end-all be-all of things, and for the most part that was true. I got a job doing charity stuff at some high-end soup kitchen. I heard it was mostly volunteer work so maybe they pitied me, I guess zakat is zakat regardless.
Eventually, I saved up for a cheap rod and made a few friends fishing near my childhood river. I knew the place well, remembered all the times dad took me to swim in what probably wasn’t a safe place to do so, and got some big hauls. Then one of my friends offered me a job in the Horizon Initiative.
He sold me a job that was basically just my old work but more nighttime Imam than evening soup mami. Said they were doing some administrative reevaluation and I sorta qualified. Took the deal, obviously, my friends' drunk promises about money & girls were surprisingly convincing. So was the paycheck upfront I guess.
When I first got there, I couldn’t shake the tension in every room they strung me around. Thought it was stress from constant renovations, but I guess there was a lot more to it. They told me not think too hard about it, and I listened.
A few months in, I finally got settled in my position. Boring paperwork aside, it was fun those first weeks. I felt like a kid opening his birthday gift every time I looked through those documents. Every artefact or anomaly was another shot of iman directly into my body. There were ones that saddened me, surprised me, or scared me, but I could never look away from one in particular. Well, I guess it wasn’t just one.
The swords were the most beautiful things I had ever laid eyes upon. It was frankly appalling that the Initiative was just letting weapons wielded by prophets rot in some non-existent country, stuck to the damned floor like lamp posts. They weren’t even being monitored! Left in the oh so precious care of an overblown penitentiary with a god complex! I made sure to visit Fhahonce the second I got the chance, flew out all the way from our needlessly secretive HQ in Antarctica.
How does one even describe such a sight? It was safe to say the long journey there was worth it. They were more beautiful in person than anything I could’ve imagined. Perhaps if I saw them in a museum, I wouldn't have been so amazed. Yet to see those divine and ancient artefacts driven in the ground like stakes still held a certain elegance I can’t quite grasp even now. I couldn't help getting closer to them, beginning to circle around them, my eyes dancing across every inch of the hilt all the way to the blade I considered cutting my finger on just to see what would happen.
Truly it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience gentlemen.
Oh, and then a wooden sign caught my feet as I was met by a deceptively deep gap in the dirt. I couldn't read a dead language obviously but I assume it was some sort of warning, it might be useful for historical purposes. But such a thing was not of any concern to me at that moment I hit the ground.
I was never really good at math, couldn’t solve an integral to save my life, division, algebra, and so on… none of it really clicked for me.
But one thing Im damn sure about is knowing how to count to ten.
1…
2…
3…
4…
5…
6…
7…
8…
The ninth never came. I circled and circled the entire area at least fifty times before the absurdity of my situation settled. One of the swords had gone missing, and I had not even the composure to remember which sword it was.
My mind began to act faster than my body, spinning through every explanation it could think of.
Was it the Foundation? Was it collateral from the great cleansing? I was not one to put numbers in faith but I had to admit the Initiatives Akivamancers were reliable, and they foretold no signs of this. So what else could it be? How could it be? No answer was satisfactory.
And yet, what I was truly most perplexed by was the consequences. Or lack thereof to be precise. Perhaps if I had checked with the seismologists, we would’ve found some correlation, some sort of evidence as to what happened here. After all, if even one of the blades were somehow removed, surely the movements of the earth would have told-
I froze.
1…
2…
3…
4…
5…
6…
7…
8…
I plucked out each sword from the dirt, one by one with all the grace my shaking hands could muster. I made sure to lay them gently on the ground as I realized the truth…
The swords had lost their weight, along with their connection to the earth.
Pardon my rant, fellow Sealbearers, but a saint has passed through this land.
I expect us to address this thoroughly in the coming summit.
