Appearance: 
  
 
Page:   
 Share It:
https://fiction.homepageofthedead.com/forum.pl?readfiction=1118H

Why Gahaziel Gave Up Saging
(© Biswapriya Purkayastha)

Page 2



This happened a long time ago (Gahaziel said), when I was a young man, not much older than you lot. It was just after the Great Collapse, and people were still picking up the pieces. Nobody had much of an idea of what was coming, only that everything had changed, forever. In times like that, sages are much in demand.

I was coming up north through the areas where the industrial units had stood before the Great Collapse. Now, of course, they were piles of rusting ruins, full of angry and lost people looking for their lives.

Back then, you must understand, there was no Gang Government, no local barons enforcing the peace. Everyone had to pretty much fend for themselves, and any stranger was an enemy unless he could prove that he could be useful in some way. Of course, each group had different requirements, so that anyone who could satisfy one lot wouldn’t necessarily pass unscathed through the next. Only a sage could give everyone what they wanted, which was hopeful words, even if the hope was utter bullshit. So I became a sage.

Even though I’d only adopted the profession as a necessity of survival, I found I’d a definite flair for it. Of course, I wasn’t the only sage moving through the country – many others had had the same idea, and each one was in direct competition to all the rest, looking for a unique selling point. What made me successful, I think, was that I didn’t really care.

See here – I’d had a bad time in the Great Collapse. I’d lost everything I had, including a nice thing I’d set up with a girl. I was moving north, but without a specific destination in mind, and without really caring if I got there or had to turn back. So I wasn’t particularly trying to please anyone. I just told them what I really thought.

I didn’t fully qualify as a sage, of course, until I’d acquired a retinue of disciples. There weren’t that many of them, four or five at most, and it doesn’t matter who they were because none stuck around for very long. But having a few disciples gave me credibility – each time I arrived at a new town, retinue in tow, I didn’t have to establish all over again that I was a sage and nobody should kill me or drive me away.

Actually, things were going so well that I didn’t head north right away as I’d originally planned. As I said, there wasn’t anything really important up there in any case. So I spent a couple of years meandering back and forth through the belt, earning my way by offering my sage’s wisdom, and I didn’t really see any reason why things shouldn’t go on like this for decades to come.

Of course, we did hear the talk of the gang bosses setting up regional governments, but in the former industrial belt there was only chaos and total social breakdown. People had to go about with knives and homemade spears, and those who were fortunate enough to have houses to live in made them into miniature fortresses. Any source of food or clothing was a vital asset, to be guarded at all costs. And there wasn’t even a hope of getting help if one fell ill. It was a perfect time to be a sage, better than it ever has been before or since.

Then one night I was leaving a town on the industrial zone when it first happened. I’d spent several happy weeks in that town – the inhabitants hung on to my words with pathetic eagerness and the women...well, let’s say the women threw themselves at me in such numbers that I was spoilt for choice. But, as always happens, one of them began growing clingy and talking of settling down, and some of the local young men began getting jealous, and I decided to leave while the leaving was good.

At this time I had only three disciples – two men and a young woman – and they had their own little jealous triangle on. It didn’t matter to me what they did with each other, of course, and this particular trio had got on my nerves so completely that I didn’t really mind if they chose not to tag along with me. But I needed them to establish my sage credentials, so I went and hunted them up. I arrived just as the two men were about to go for each other, knives drawn, while the woman squawked shrill encouragement and advice impartially to both. Total idiots, as I said, and once again I was tempted to leave them all behind.

[ Continue to page 3 ]

Donate
Help keep this site online by donating and helping to cover its costs.

Information
Genre:General Horror
Type:Short story
Rating:7.11 / 10
Rated By:14 users
Comments: 0 users
Total Hits:23784

Follow Us
 Join us on Facebook to be notified of updates
 Follow us on Twitter to be notified of updates

Forum Discussion
 "In A Violent Nature" - trailer... »
 Helldivers 2 (video game) »
 Alien: Romulus (trailer)... »
 Could James Rhodes aka War Machine hav... »
 Could James Remar have portrayed Rhode... »
 Reacher (Amazon series) »
 SRS Cinema (Merged Threads) »
 Rate the last movie you've seen »
 Fallout (Amazon Prime series) - Based ... »
 TWD: "The Ones Who Live" (Rick/Michonn... »
 TWD: Dead City teaser... »
 Had Rhodes and the boys been inside th... »
 Shogun (TV series) »
 MZ's Movie Review Thread »
 Dune: Part 2 (film) »
 For those who have visited the Monroev... »
 Masters of the Air (Apple TV+ series)... »
 the Walking Dead Empires. PC/MAC MMO S... »
 Boy Kills World (film) trailer... »
 Dawn Of The Dead (1978) - On-Set Home ... »