Young Writers Society

Every last place on Earth has its own rich history and its own people. Thousands, maybe tens of thousands of years ago, we discovered farming. It changed everything. We settled down in one place; we no longer roamed the vast wilderness. These people, these initial settlers, would slowly lose their hunter-gatherer cultures, and many would see changes in their religions as a result. One primordial legend clung to life through the epochs, though. Creatures not quite human, who would kill innocent humans and take pleasure from it. The Asin of the Pacific Northwest, who would snatch naughty children to eat. The Tiyanak of the Philippines, who would lead travellers forever astray. The Dullahan of Ireland, a headless horseman who would find those about to die and pay them a visit.

The various Demons of many mythos, who only wished to sow chaos and watch humans fall to depravity. Who wanted nothing more than to see a mighty civilisation crumble.

Hana loved to pore over the dozens of legendary creatures she had learned about in her professors’ classrooms. Whenever she had a slow task, like now, slowly piecing together a vase shattered millennia ago by a people long since extinct, she immersed herself in her old university lectures.

This vase, ovaloid and squat, had once belonged to an Alashiyan elite. Three thousand years ago, their town had been sacked, evidenced by the charred remains of buildings and arrowheads scattered about. In the chaos, the vase was probably dropped, where it broke on impact. It was left forgotten for thousands of years. Only now, millennia later, Hana was carefully piecing it together, restoring it to its former glory.

The raid that destroyed the complex hadn’t been an isolated one. For every settlement like this, whose remains survived to the modern day and were found, dozens had likely been lost forever. Alashiya had been a rich country that exported copper all across the ancient Mediterranean world. But it, just like its neighbours, all fell one by one. The Bronze Age came to a violent end, as civilisations disappeared from the written record one after another. Only Egypt survived the onslaught, and even then in a greatly weakened state. They blamed a mysterious people who came from the sea and razed their great metropolises. Maybe this unfortunate town shared the same fate.

Hana carefully added a final strip of glue to the last fragment, then slid it carefully into place. She had let her mind wander for long enough to complete her afternoon’s project. Hana wiped her sweaty brow, then sat back to examine her handiwork.

The vase, now restored to its long-lost original form, was ornate. Carvings of spear-wielding men, engaged in a battle with deformed, winged humoids, circled its centre a full rotation. At its top, just below the brim, words in the ancient Sumerian language in which Hana had been trained were inscribed: ‘Lest we ever forget the appearance of the beasts’.

Carefully, Hana lifted the jar. She stepped out from under the tent she had worked under, and walked across the site to a table. She set the vase down next to another, which depicted a man in a chariot, falling to the ground as foot soldiers attacked him. A very classic scene of Bronze Age warfare. Once she was confident in its stability on the table, she took a Post-it Note and marked down the vase’s original location, position, and its inscription. At long last, her day was finished.

…

There wasn’t a lot to do near the small coastal Cypriot hamlet of Nea Dimmata. But it was where the archaeologists and anthropologists of Hana’s dig site were staying, so they made do with the meagre nightlife available. Luckily enough, the ville had a single, small restaurant. Tonight, like many others, the team gathered there, huddled around a table, to talk over dinner about their discoveries and theories.

“It's probably mythological, right, Hana?”

“Hana?”

Hana had let herself become distracted by her thoughts of antiquity. “Uh… I wasn’t paying attention. Sorry. Could you say that again?”

“The humanoids on the vase you were reconstituting- they were probably mythological creatures, right?”

“There’s a chance. I’ve never seen a creature like that before” Hana was an expert on the Sumerian language, but she didn’t know as much about ancient Near East cultures as most people on her team. At 23, she was only freshly out of college. Many of her colleagues had been working at sites in the field since before she was born.

One of the older anthropologists pitched into the discussion. “You said the humanoids had wings on their backs, right? It might be a depiction of Anzu, of Sumerian myth.”

Anzu was a winged beast-man hybrid demon in Sumerian religion, but his depictions leaned much more heavily towards the beast side than the man.“Maybe?” Hana replied, “But it was a lot more human-like than what Anzu usually looks like, and there were several of them.”

Sam, the only researcher near her in age piped into the conversation, “Maybe they were similar to Geryon? One of his predecessors, that evolved into him over the millennia, perhaps?”

“Of Greek myth?”, disagreed the aging anthropologist, “There are centuries between this site and the first recordings of Geryon, the engravings are missing Geryon’s extra heads and limbs, and like Hana said, there are several of the creatures. I wouldn’t be surprised if those are some new creature entirely. Of Alashiyan folk tales rather than Sumerian mythology.”

Hana finished her meal and stood up, leaving her plate behind. “I think I’ll be heading to bed soon. See you all tomorrow.”

The various workers at the table wished her a good night’s rest before returning to their meals. She was the first to exit the restaurant. She paused for a moment and took in the eatery’s facade. Small windows, set on either side of the door, let shafts of light out into the night. The restaurant’s hubbub drifted out with the motes of light.

Above her, a weathered, old sign creaked. She hadn’t had a reason to take note of it before, but the logo on the restaurant’s sign now filled her with a sense of uneasiness. It had, somehow, after more than three thousand years, that exact same beastman on its logo.

Lest we ever forget the appearance of the beasts.

…

Hana returned to her temporary home by the seaside. The sounds of the restaurant were still distantly audible. The only sign of life in the now-dark hamlet.

The cottage was as old and tiny as the village itself. It had slate-grey stone walls, smoothly hewn from the many centuries of wind erosion from the salty Mediterranean breeze. A single small window faced towards the sea.

Hana entered her minuscule abode. After the day spent at a hot dig site in the dirt, she should have showered. She was just too exhausted to care right now. She ignored the bathroom and headed straight for her bed, tucked away in another corner of the single room. Sam, her roommate, had yet to return. Maybe he would soon.

She settled into her cot and let her mind wander, remembering the various events of the day. Sam had found something exciting, didn’t he? Some old text to translate in the rubble? She supposed that would be her job tomorrow, as the resident Sumerian language expert. Unless it was written in Akkadian or Coptic or another tongue entirely.

She began drifting off to sleep, but was startled fully awake by one of her semi-concious musings.

Had that fish-headed man engraved in the window always been there?

Hana got up from her bed and crossed the small room to examine the window. It was dark outside, so she couldn’t fully see it in detail, but a man with a fish’s head clearly, if faintly, filled the frame. She leaned in to examine the man more closely.

The window crunched inwards. A large, meaty hand grabbed her by the neck. In front of her, that fish-headed man was very much real. She struggled, but the beast was much, much too strong for her. It dragged her through the broken window, scraping her whole body along the broken-glass bottom, with inhuman strength. She couldn’t even resist one of the beast’s hands.

High above, grotesque, almost-human creatures circled around rising smoke. They had wings protruding from their backs that kept their bodies aloft.

An ancient warning had said to remember the winged beasts’ appearance. Humanity had forgotten.