Godly Vessel - Part One

Sitting in my tiny cramped office I lean back, the fake leather of my chair squeaking beneath me as the metal frame creaks and clicks. I tap at my lips with my pencil, pondering as I glance down at my hastily scrawled notes.

"Maybe it's..." I mutter, ending in a sigh as I begin to scribble out a few lines of text. "No no, that doesn't seem right..."

I lean forward, the chair lurching with a loud clunk. My desk rocks as I place my arm on it, my hand shooting out to catch the small hardened mud idol before it can fall to the floor. I let out a little sigh of relief, my gentle grip holding the human-like figurine lightly in order to not break the fragile surface.

"Almost lost you there" I chuckle, propping it back up onto the desk as I turn to look over it once again in search for something new or that I had missed.

The tiny gray brown statuette sits top a small rock disk. As much as I had tried I had failed to make out the sex of the figure propped atop the ancient stone, time having worn the thing down to a slender stick figure without much of anything in the way of identifying marks.

It stands on what seem to be its toes, arms outstretched both to the sides and to the air as though in ascension and in anticipation of a warm welcoming embrace.

A set of symbols rest around the base, the finely etched scrawling having been worn away to but the faintest indents in the rock. They were truly archaic, the shape and form

After seeing it at a local flea market I simply had to have it. It was just so strange, between the faint barely perceptible writings around the base to the hard featureless figure atop it that seemed both impossibly hard yet as fragile as hollow eggshell.

For weeks I had been held up in my study, only leaving for food and to get new books from my former work and their seemingly endless collection of weird old texts in deep storage. Still, the only thing that had cracked even a little was me.

What was worse was a clawing thought, something that one of my former colleagues had asked only a few days into my research.

"What if it's just some neat amateur art?"

When discussing the statue with a member of the history department, hoping to get some clue as to the style and background to the figure on top, a passing by archeologist gave me the simple solution as just an off-hand question.

It had plagued me since.

What if the rock was just from a local park?

What if the caked mud figurine was from someone's backyard?

All it would take is a sample and calling in some old favors, a small scratch along one of the less visible areas of the statute and I would have my answers in a matter of days. The thought of damaging the statute if it was a legitimate artifact was almost as scary as the thought of having wasted all this time trying to research someone's first-year art project.

With a deep sigh I glance over my notes one more time, my gaze roaming to the numerous notepads of failed research and dead leads. Black marks score the pages, loose sheets sitting scattered and torn as they cover my desk and even my computer itself.

I catch the sight of my gaunt pale face in the dark screen of my computer, the large heavy bags beneath my eyes revealing my lack of sleep. Defeat slowly spreads across my face, my eyes darting down to the last of my translations attempts.

"Not Mesopota..." I grumble, scratching at the symbols I had traced from one of the many borrowed books. "Of course it's... You know what..." I huff, picking up the little idol as I begin to spin it around in my hand in search for some mark or scratch that I could simply borrow some more material from.

Despite my best efforts I can't seem to find even a single knick or scuff on the exterior, the dried mud figure seemingly lacking any for of imperfection beyond the uniform ravages of time. With my patience running out I pull open my draw, pulling out a little metal compass, unfurling the folded drawing tool to produce the sharp pointed end.

Reaching between the legs of the statue with the pointed metal spike I wince a little, my own body recoiling as I prepare to scrape at the sensitive area. However, as I lightly grind the compass over the thin mud-like surface nothing seems to happen, the tip sliding over without so much as a single speck of dust coming free.

Biting my lip I press harder, my frustration reaching a boiling point as I shift the metal spike back and forth over and over with great force on each pass.

"Come on..." I grunt, tilting the compass to more pierce the thin shell than scrape as I try to get anything from the damned statuette.

Suddenly, I freeze as the sound of crackly hits my ears. My blood runs cold, my heart skipping a beat as a moment of realization crashes down on me like a wave. I watch as a fissure forms up the back of the small idol, the split emanating up from the pointed tip of the compass as it buries in between the legs of the tiny figure.

As I try to move the compass away I feel something wrap around my wrist, my eyes going wide as a glowing golden tendril lashes itself around my hand. It's beautiful and glorious, the shimmering alien... thing leaving me struck with nothing short of awe.

More and more writhing tendrils erupt from the fissure, thrashing about in either panic or fury as they reach out to me. They bind my arms, first grappling down the one holding the compass before quickly clinging to that holding the idol. My skin burns, my flesh crackling and sizzling at the touch of the furious glowing entity.

"It's..." I wheeze, tears filling my eyes as the idol shatters. I don't get to finish my sentence before the golden mass flings itself into my mouth, the center of the ooze looking as bright as the sun and twice as dazzling.

A gurgling howl escapes my lips, the air spluttering past the wriggling mass as forces it's way down my throat. One by one it's tendrils detach from my arms, slurping up into my gullet as it tries to pull itself deeper and deeper.

Little did I know what I had found, and what I had unleashed back into the world. The tiny idol not just having been some long lost relic or piece of art, but having been made as a vessel for a long lost god of...