The Fire

The Fire

The village warriors stood before the smoldering remains of their people, their faces hardened by loss. The settlement, a fragile collection of woven huts, bore the brutal scars of the gorilla attack—shattered posts, trampled gardens, and the dark, drying blood of the twelve who had fallen. Among the mourners, Ga stood tallest, his broad chest heaving with a grief that had already curdled into rage. He was a leader of the hunt, his authority carved from strength and survival.

Across from him, Kensi, the spiritual leader, watched the smoke rise. His eyes, deep-set and ancient, saw more than just smoke; they saw spirits fleeing before their time, their journey to the sky-world disrupted by violence. His hands, stained with sacred ochre, trembled slightly.

Ga turned from the pyres, his voice a low growl that carried over the silent gathering. “We cry. We mourn. We kill!”

Kensi stepped forward, his movement a quiet contrast to Ga’s fury. “No, Ga. The Sun-Father’s light reveals the path of life, not of vengeance. 

Ga’s face contorted. He did not speak to Kensi, but to the people—to the mother clutching the shredded garment of her daughter, to the brother whose twin was gone. “Our families gone! They spilled our blood on our own ground!” He swept a powerful arm towards the grieving. “Will their pain be soothed by your chants?”

A low murmur of agreement rippled through the crowd. The raw, human need for retribution was a force more immediate than any divine warning. Kensi saw the shift, the hardening of hearts. “The gods might forsake us,” he whispered, but his voice was lost in the rising tide of anger.

“They have numbers! They have strength!” a younger man cried out, his voice cracking with fear.

A grim, terrifying smile touched Ga’s lips. He knelt, scooping up a handful of dark, sticky earth from near a seep at the edge of the camp. It was a substance they knew from the land—black, foul, that clung to the feet and burned with a strange, long smoke if it touched a fire.

“We do not fight them with our hands alone,” Ga declared, holding up the glistening tar. “We fight them with black blood.”

The plan was terrifying in its simplicity. Under Ga’s direction, they gathered broken pieces of flat stone and gourds, filling them with the thick tar, and fashioned crude torches for the warriors. Kensi stood at the edge of the camp, his final plea a solitary, desperate sound. “Do not do this.”

He was met with averted eyes and stony silence. He was no longer their guide; he was a relic of a passive time they could no longer afford. As the war party moved out, he was left alone with the smoke and the silence.

The journey to the gorilla abode was a silent, grim march. The forest, once a place of bounty and mystery, was now an enemy territory. They found the great apes in a rocky clearing, hulking shadows moving with a primal peace that seemed to mock their own loss.

Ga gave the signal.

The tar-pots were lit. Small, contained fires flickered on the stone plates, the tar bubbling and spitting, releasing a thick, acrid smoke that stung the eyes. Then, with a unified roar that was part terror, part triumph, the men hurled their creations into the heart of the gorilla territory.

The result was an inferno born of a nightmare.

The tar did not just burn; it clung and spread. It painted the trees and the rocks in liquid fire. The gorillas’ roars of confusion turned to shrieks of pure agony as the unnatural fire clung to their fur, eating into flesh. The fire, once a tool for warmth and safety, had become a devouring beast. It ignored the paths and the streams, leaping from canopy to canopy, a raging, orange tide that consumed everything in its path. Other animals in the forest were also not spared from its wrath.

They returned to their settlement as the sun set, their victory assured. 

That night, the people celebrated their brutal vengeance, their shadows dancing against the cave walls. The flames could still be seen on the horizon, a hellish glow that painted their faces in shifting, demonic light.

It was then that the figure emerged.

It did not walk from the trees; it seemed to form from the very smoke and shadow of the burned land. It was thrice the height of the tallest man, a humanoid form of woven charcoal and shimmering heat-haze. Its eyes were not eyes, but pits of cooled embers, and it moved in absolute silence. The air around it grew cold.

A young warrior, mad with confidence and the remnants of battle-rage, hurled his spear. The weapon froze mid-air, melting, and the young man instantly crumbled to the ground, dead, with all thought and life extinguished.

A voice spoke, not a sound that traveled through the air, but one that formed directly inside their minds, cold and menacing.

"You have used the seed of the sun."

The people fell to their knees, their celebration frozen in terror.

"You children, playing with a god’s weapon! This fire was not for your hands. You are not ready."

The figure’s ember-eyes scanned their terrified faces. 

"You have not slain beasts today. You have slain balance. You have unleashed a new kind of death onto the world of man. A death that does not nourish, but only consumes. A power you are too young to hold. This knowledge is a curse you are not ready to bear. A generational curse!"

Ga stared up, his defiance gone, replaced by a primal fear he had never known. He was a leader of men, but this was beyond his comprehension.

The figure began to dissolve, its form streaming away like smoke caught in a sudden wind. Its final words echoed in the silent, terrified hollow of their minds.

"You have no idea what you have done."