Old Book

Duskwood,

2017, February 7th

My name Damien Hill, I have this strange gift or curse. I can see a timer above people heads. The scary part is when the timer hits zero, they'll die. This is not any strange hallucination. Either by accident, diseases or old age, when the timer hits zero they'll die.

No one knows about this, except my dad. The weird thing I can't see the timer above him or myself. I made me promise to hide my ability, and I did. He hiding something from me. This curse has been responsible for my personal. Anyway, this is not about me. it's about my friend Jack.

A few days ago, my friend; Jack found this weird book. "South of Broad" is a notoriously old, and particularly wealthy part of town. A family just bought a carriage house there and wanted to do some renovation. Jack's dad an architect as expected took the job.

Apparently, the carriage house had never been renovated though, because they attempted to dig into the foundation and start their excavation, a shovel knocked into a wooden box buried underground.

That immediately was a red flag for the construction crew, who then called in Jack's dad. He couldn't do much more other than supervising the remainder of the construction in a way that it was done without harming any other potential historical items underneath, but he really couldn't do much until the ground everywhere was breached.

However, he did dig up the box that they had originally bumped into. He said it was a pretty inconspicuous box, which had started to show early signs of rot, which means it wasn't in the ground much longer than 70-100 years. He properly categorized, documented, photographed and recorded the box, and opened it to reveal what was inside. The only thing inside of the box was just a book.

He took the book back to his home and eventually forgot about it. The new owners never mentioned the book hence the book was just there untouched until Jack found it. I have to say he is kind of a history nerd, he has been obsessed studying this book for days.

It looked incredibly old, even from the outside you could tell that the pages were yellowed and uneven, the binding was near the end of its life, and the title was in a language he couldn't decipher.

After a bit of research, he found out that book was written in Greek. I am worried about the guy, he has only a year left.

I haven't met him in days, he said that he will call me after he finishes the translating of the book.

So, I am here standing in front of his room.

*Knock* *Knock*

What the hell?

"Jack, opened the door."

*Knock* *Knock*

The door finally opened revealing Jack with messed up hair and tired eyes. Looks like he hasn't been sleeping.

"Damien, come inside." He pulled me in and closed the door.

"Dude, what's wrong with you?" I asked after finding some balance.

"Just come here."

He didn't answer and sat on his chair near his desk. I came closer to take a look. Few pages and the book was there.

"This?"

"The translations."

"Okay. What is the book about? Curiosity is killing me."

"The title of the book translates as the Varks."

Varks?

"You are not going to believe this... According to this first chapter... WE are gods"

"What the hell?!" I exclaimed. What does that even mean?

He went on to explain the whole first chapter:

Varks, they explain are gods of the mundane, the everyday. The reason it's not so widely known is that once someone realizes their domain, they can exercise total control over it, and cause chaos.

They say that an unknown divinity bestowed a gift upon the human soul, that they were to be made like gods, gods of different things that he created for them, and as people age and create children, their domains merge, and children become gods of another item.

Jack deduced that there must be multiple Varks of the same item. There are not enough items for 7 billion people in the world. Most humans could not access this power, some who were able were considered superhumans. There were also those who's power could challenge gods. They were known as the Varks.

The Varks in the age of the book had learned of their domains apparently due to a process and learning items known as the "forbidden knowledge". They began to challenge the traditional gods, pushing the boundaries of what their domain was, and the gods that oversaw their domain. They got feisty, they were intentionally creating children to form stronger and stronger domains. In short; they planned to rival the traditional gods for control of the known world.

The traditional gods went to war against the Varks.

Zeus struck down every challenger, Aphrodite made humans of opposite items fall in love so their power negates each other, other gods wiped the memories of humans who knew about this.

Their plan worked, humanity slowly forgot their powers.

The people who wrote the book may have been the last humans with powers.

The book itself, details the forbidden knowledge, how to access your godlike side, and to take control of your domain.

I will say, it was incredibly convincing. I could see how the author of the book genuinely felt this was true, and you could tell in the way that Jack was explaining, that he also believed in this information wholeheartedly. It would account for why the book was locked away and buried, maybe it is secret knowledge we weren't supposed to know.

"Damien, don't tell me you are not interested?" He asked.

"I am not gonna lie, this looks pretty interesting. But I am not buying it."

"You know, if this is all real, I don't think it's a great idea to bring about the wrath of some deities onto you."

"It's obviously not real."

"Troy was a myth until it was found out to be real. Let's try the ritual and verify ourselves."

"It's not real, and I'm about to prove it. Let's do this. I hope you translated it word for word"

"I did" an exasperated Jack replied. "There are some Greek chants you'll need to recite, but I've written them out phonetically for you so that it's easier. You'll need to sit outside, specifically in a grass field, with a circle of candles with some symbols engraved put out around you. The key is to get in touch with the earth, as it's the earth that ultimately bestows this power to you through your connection to it. The entity gave us the gifts, but the Gaia is the one who makes sure we use them.

Once you're in the circle, you'll need to recite these phrases. You'll need to do it properly, so practice first. After that, it says the knowledge will be bestowed upon you and doesn't go much into detail after that, so I guess we'll see where to go from there"

"Let's do this." This is how I will spend my day. Doing this weird ritual with my friend. Two sixteen-year-olds. Who am I kidding? There are kids doing more weirder shit nowadays. Somewhere inside I am hoping, this could be a explanation for my power.

"Easy enough" he replied, grabbed some candles and twine out of the cabinets and marched out the door.

Both of our parents are out of town. I got nothing else to do. What am I doing with my life?

"Let's go," He said with a nod towards me. "We're going to Hampton Park after dark"

Since the sun was setting, we didn't have long to wait, so we pulled into the parking lot and marched ourselves with armfuls of candles into Hampton Park. The crowd luckily weans as it gets darker, so we didn't have much of an audience for what may or may happen in a few minutes.

I engraved the symbols on the candles as accurately as I could.

Jack had been constantly reciting his lines in Greek, even doing a few Google searches to make sure he was pronouncing them correctly, as I set up the candles in a circle around where he would sit. We lit each candle with a match, and Jack stepped into his illuminated circle and sat down.

He sat in the circle, with legs crossed, and the candlelight shining off of his hair. He slowly closed his eyes, reached his hands down and grabbed fistfuls of grass underneath him. His lips started moving, and as a minute went by the world grew quiet. The frogs no longer sang, the cicadas didn't chirp, there wasn't even the usual car alarm going off somewhere else downtown. He continued in his trance, and things grew even quieter. It was as if the air was sucked out of the atmosphere itself, and I could do nothing but stare at my friend with wide eyes and a hopeful heart.

He kept reciting until apparently, he finished. He eyes opened, the sound returned to the world, and he slowly stood up. "Look, nothing happened. Nothing is different," he said with a laugh. As he laughed, he turned and opened his palms toward the sky.

"I told you, nothing ma..."

*Drag*

Awww, something pushed me. What the hell was that? I just fell on the ground because of some force.

"Jack..."

I looked at him with shock, a tiny tornado was swirling on Jack's palm.

"Wind" Jack gasped. "D-Damien, my domain is wind..."