32 Ashan 700
No one could remember when it happened, but, when it did, all that was left behind was The Pit.
At first, The Pit was a subject viewed with anxiety and fear. People didn't trust a giant, gaping chasm that seemed to stretch down into the very depths of the underworld itself. They didn't trust the fact that anyone who descended into the seemingly endless recess never returned. Nor did they trust the strange way in which light seemed to be bent and subsequently devoured by the blackness, casting the entire city in an endlessly grey pallor where before had been bright blue skies and sunbeams. And they certainly didn't trust the indisputable fact that since The Pit's appearance, children had started disappearing during the night, their little whispers occasionally heard drifting up from The Pit itself.
The people became so fearful and so anxious, in fact, that they had begun to sacrifice their children to The Pit before a young man by the name of Marvin Myacovski arrived to put a stop to their superstitious lunacy. He single-handedly cast his entire family of fifteen thousand one hundred fifty-one children into The Pit, assuaging its deep and longing hunger and freeing the city from its curse. As thanks for his great sacrifice, Marvin Myacovski was crowned the rural mayor governer of the city. His first decree was that The Pit be not feared but celebrated and instituted the national holiday of "Hey, Let's Go Precariously Walk Along the Very Steep and Suspiciously Slipper Edge of The Pit" Day.
It was a huge success.
People arrived from far and wide to celebrate "Hey, Let's Go Precariously Walk Along the Very Steep and Suspiciously Slipper Edge of The Pit" Day. Women and their daughters arrived in sleek, black carriages pulled by their multiple husbands. Fathers and sheep arrived in flying contraptions constructed out of the bones of their third born sons. Boy and girls arrived hand in hand after thwarting evil witches and edible real estate. The city prospered and The Pit became one of the most discally beloved of the world's three great wonders - the other two being the Statue of the Very Talented Woman in the Northern Wastes and the Non-consensual Murderer in the Southern Jungles. The Pit was more loved than each of them, but not when they were combined, as that would have just simply been too ludicrous an amount of affection.
So The Pit's fame grew and more and more people flocked to its suspiciously slick edges. Those who fell into the pit were lauded as heroes, as there was nothing luckier during "Hey, Let's Go Precariously Walk Along the Very Steep and Suspiciously Slipper Edge of The Pit" Day than to fall into the pit; there was even more luck to be had if one managed to pull in a few extras on the way down. Where there was once fear and anxiety, laughter and happiness pushed such things aside.
The Pit was wonderful.
The Pit was exciting.
The Pit slowly became their new god.
Due to the reportedly fickle nature but relatively complete lack of appearance to anyone but very specific people over stretches of time of nothing of their old gods, the people turned to The Pit with all of their pent up faith and let it burst - hot, thick, and creamy - all over The Pit's face. Babies were thrown into The Pit in hopes that whatever infinite darkness lay within its deepest, darkest depths would be better than the miserable life it would have faced upon the surface above - though some did simply throw their babies into The Pit for pleasure and others to avoid the purported "joys" of parenthood.
The Congregation of The Pit started out small with only several hundred members, but as the years passed and people's faiths grew bigger and bigger and harder, daddy, harder, their numbers swelled to an engorged fifty-seven percent of the population of the greater area of the regions. They built a great monastery near the northern side of The Pit, at the very site where Marvin Myacovski had delivered his spawn unto the great and benevolent gape of The Pit. "Hey, Let's Go Precariously Walk Along the Very Steep and Suspiciously Slipper Edge of The Pit" Day, in time, became known as "The Holy Day of Hey, Let's Go Precariously Walk Along the Very Steep and Suspiciously Slipper Edge of The Pit". Like all things, time saw to change it. Where there once had been joy and laughter, there was now laughter and joy.
And piety.
The Cking of the Congregation was the most pious of them all. His sermons were recorded by the many scribes of the Congregation of The Pit, handed out to men who resembled the Cking, and read in the Cking's voice to millions upon high numbers than that of people. He was the second most beloved figure in the world, and his word became religious law. The Pit spoke to him and only him, and every man and woman and child and creature was eager to know the will of The Pit, and their lives revolved around the Cking's words.
Decades passed, and it was soon revealed the Cking of the Congregation had not aged a day since he had ascended to the papal throne of the Congregation of The Pit's Most Holy of Monasteries. Some fell down upon their faces in blind worship of what surely must have been the Cking's indisputable divinity, while others began to demand the chance for their own immortality. The number of dissenters gradually grew over the centuries, starting first at one, then two, then four, then eight, then several hundred thousand, then several hundred thousand and one, then many, many more.
Soon, the land was fraught with strife. Father turned against mother. Son turned against cousin. Neighbors became sexually intimate after very painful and very emotional breakups. The milk man ran out of milk. Something fell out of the sky and hit a chicken upon its head and cause the poor creature to genuinely believe the sky was going to fall. There was chaos and order and rioting in a specific suburb of the city due to a lack of infrastructure and centuries of negligent policy-making.
Something had to be done.
Though destiny surely bellowed with laughter, the duty fell upon the lap of a young man by the name of Marvin Myacovski. Yes, indeed, it was the same Marvin Myacovski of old, only he wasn't old. He was young. One of the greatest secrets kept by the Congregation of the Pit, Marvin Myacovski had survived for over a millennia upon the donations of the Congregation, hidden away within a small cave just below the lip of The Pit and several thousand measurement units down. When he learned that the Cking had been blessed with the powers of eternal youth as well, he then knew what it was his entire life had been leading up to.
He had been sustained and allowed to live within the eternal grace of The Pit in order to survive to that very moment and kill the Cking.
Utilizing his impressive upper body strength honed through years of feasting exclusive upon the torsos and pituitary glands of the many, many sacrifices the people and yeeted over the edge for thousands of years, Marvin Myacovski slow scaled the great walls. It took him many years, but after exactly some of them had passed, he at last set foot upon the scarred and corrupted land of the earth that surrounded the suspiciously slippery edges of The Pit's circumference.
It is said he stood there and stared at the grand magnificence of the Congregation of The Pit for five hundred years and one day, but the truth is he stood there for five hundred years and two days. Upon the one hundred eighty-thousand five hundred second day, he set forth to do glorious battle with the Cking.
The world was not as Marvin Myacovski remembered it. The sky had long since fallen, leaving behind only crumbs and flavor powder in the corners where it had gotten stuck and couldn't be easily removed without applying water. All of the fathers and divorced their husbands and have begun to engage in general debauchery involving stumps and small woodland ferns. The mothers had been on strike since the turning of the last century, and most of them had succumbed to the various diseases and plagues that had swept in from the eastern marches.
The children, however, were in power.
They had overthrown the Cking, removed his head from his body, and had consumed the sweet lifeblood of his neck stump. Their tiny, bitey teeth had grown square and powerful. Their little hands were still small and soft but now held the Congregation's most powerful of weapons: really absurdly small books that were just singular sections of the Congregation's main holy relic tome of written words.
When Marvin Myacovski saw all of this, he lost all will to fight and promptly died.
No one could remember when it happened, but, when it did, all that was left behind was The Pit.
At first, The Pit was a subject viewed with anxiety and fear. People didn't trust a giant, gaping chasm that seemed to stretch down into the very depths of the underworld itself. They didn't trust the fact that anyone who descended into the seemingly endless recess never returned. Nor did they trust the strange way in which light seemed to be bent and subsequently devoured by the blackness, casting the entire city in an endlessly grey pallor where before had been bright blue skies and sunbeams. And they certainly didn't trust the indisputable fact that since The Pit's appearance, children had started disappearing during the night, their little whispers occasionally heard drifting up from The Pit itself.
The people became so fearful and so anxious, in fact, that they had begun to sacrifice their children to The Pit before a young man by the name of Marvin Myacovski arrived to put a stop to their superstitious lunacy. He single-handedly cast his entire family of fifteen thousand one hundred fifty-one children into The Pit, assuaging its deep and longing hunger and freeing the city from its curse. As thanks for his great sacrifice, Marvin Myacovski was crowned the rural mayor governer of the city. His first decree was that The Pit be not feared but celebrated and instituted the national holiday of "Hey, Let's Go Precariously Walk Along the Very Steep and Suspiciously Slipper Edge of The Pit" Day.
It was a huge success.
People arrived from far and wide to celebrate "Hey, Let's Go Precariously Walk Along the Very Steep and Suspiciously Slipper Edge of The Pit" Day. Women and their daughters arrived in sleek, black carriages pulled by their multiple husbands. Fathers and sheep arrived in flying contraptions constructed out of the bones of their third born sons. Boy and girls arrived hand in hand after thwarting evil witches and edible real estate. The city prospered and The Pit became one of the most discally beloved of the world's three great wonders - the other two being the Statue of the Very Talented Woman in the Northern Wastes and the Non-consensual Murderer in the Southern Jungles. The Pit was more loved than each of them, but not when they were combined, as that would have just simply been too ludicrous an amount of affection.
So The Pit's fame grew and more and more people flocked to its suspiciously slick edges. Those who fell into the pit were lauded as heroes, as there was nothing luckier during "Hey, Let's Go Precariously Walk Along the Very Steep and Suspiciously Slipper Edge of The Pit" Day than to fall into the pit; there was even more luck to be had if one managed to pull in a few extras on the way down. Where there was once fear and anxiety, laughter and happiness pushed such things aside.
The Pit was wonderful.
The Pit was exciting.
The Pit slowly became their new god.
Due to the reportedly fickle nature but relatively complete lack of appearance to anyone but very specific people over stretches of time of nothing of their old gods, the people turned to The Pit with all of their pent up faith and let it burst - hot, thick, and creamy - all over The Pit's face. Babies were thrown into The Pit in hopes that whatever infinite darkness lay within its deepest, darkest depths would be better than the miserable life it would have faced upon the surface above - though some did simply throw their babies into The Pit for pleasure and others to avoid the purported "joys" of parenthood.
The Congregation of The Pit started out small with only several hundred members, but as the years passed and people's faiths grew bigger and bigger and harder, daddy, harder, their numbers swelled to an engorged fifty-seven percent of the population of the greater area of the regions. They built a great monastery near the northern side of The Pit, at the very site where Marvin Myacovski had delivered his spawn unto the great and benevolent gape of The Pit. "Hey, Let's Go Precariously Walk Along the Very Steep and Suspiciously Slipper Edge of The Pit" Day, in time, became known as "The Holy Day of Hey, Let's Go Precariously Walk Along the Very Steep and Suspiciously Slipper Edge of The Pit". Like all things, time saw to change it. Where there once had been joy and laughter, there was now laughter and joy.
And piety.
The Cking of the Congregation was the most pious of them all. His sermons were recorded by the many scribes of the Congregation of The Pit, handed out to men who resembled the Cking, and read in the Cking's voice to millions upon high numbers than that of people. He was the second most beloved figure in the world, and his word became religious law. The Pit spoke to him and only him, and every man and woman and child and creature was eager to know the will of The Pit, and their lives revolved around the Cking's words.
Decades passed, and it was soon revealed the Cking of the Congregation had not aged a day since he had ascended to the papal throne of the Congregation of The Pit's Most Holy of Monasteries. Some fell down upon their faces in blind worship of what surely must have been the Cking's indisputable divinity, while others began to demand the chance for their own immortality. The number of dissenters gradually grew over the centuries, starting first at one, then two, then four, then eight, then several hundred thousand, then several hundred thousand and one, then many, many more.
Soon, the land was fraught with strife. Father turned against mother. Son turned against cousin. Neighbors became sexually intimate after very painful and very emotional breakups. The milk man ran out of milk. Something fell out of the sky and hit a chicken upon its head and cause the poor creature to genuinely believe the sky was going to fall. There was chaos and order and rioting in a specific suburb of the city due to a lack of infrastructure and centuries of negligent policy-making.
Something had to be done.
Though destiny surely bellowed with laughter, the duty fell upon the lap of a young man by the name of Marvin Myacovski. Yes, indeed, it was the same Marvin Myacovski of old, only he wasn't old. He was young. One of the greatest secrets kept by the Congregation of the Pit, Marvin Myacovski had survived for over a millennia upon the donations of the Congregation, hidden away within a small cave just below the lip of The Pit and several thousand measurement units down. When he learned that the Cking had been blessed with the powers of eternal youth as well, he then knew what it was his entire life had been leading up to.
He had been sustained and allowed to live within the eternal grace of The Pit in order to survive to that very moment and kill the Cking.
Utilizing his impressive upper body strength honed through years of feasting exclusive upon the torsos and pituitary glands of the many, many sacrifices the people and yeeted over the edge for thousands of years, Marvin Myacovski slow scaled the great walls. It took him many years, but after exactly some of them had passed, he at last set foot upon the scarred and corrupted land of the earth that surrounded the suspiciously slippery edges of The Pit's circumference.
It is said he stood there and stared at the grand magnificence of the Congregation of The Pit for five hundred years and one day, but the truth is he stood there for five hundred years and two days. Upon the one hundred eighty-thousand five hundred second day, he set forth to do glorious battle with the Cking.
The world was not as Marvin Myacovski remembered it. The sky had long since fallen, leaving behind only crumbs and flavor powder in the corners where it had gotten stuck and couldn't be easily removed without applying water. All of the fathers and divorced their husbands and have begun to engage in general debauchery involving stumps and small woodland ferns. The mothers had been on strike since the turning of the last century, and most of them had succumbed to the various diseases and plagues that had swept in from the eastern marches.
The children, however, were in power.
They had overthrown the Cking, removed his head from his body, and had consumed the sweet lifeblood of his neck stump. Their tiny, bitey teeth had grown square and powerful. Their little hands were still small and soft but now held the Congregation's most powerful of weapons: really absurdly small books that were just singular sections of the Congregation's main holy relic tome of written words.
When Marvin Myacovski saw all of this, he lost all will to fight and promptly died.
