Introduction: The Eyes of God

It had been three weeks since the riverbed went dry. The moldering smell of mud hung thick in the air without a breeze or wind to move it, to refresh the small village. But little puddles were left of that great coursing, that faithful roaring torrent. Now only the dread of silence was heard, like the whole populace holding their collective breath. Shortly this was overrun by ceaseless buzzing. These mockish dregs, undrinkable swill, soon revealed themselves the festering centers of all manner of biting flies.

The summer born babies were the first to die, their little bodies swollen, not with endearing fat, but blistering soars oozing a yellow sickness. Then it was their still nursing mothers—the breasts unaware dead children drink not—whose skin became caked in feverish bursting lumps, who retreated out of the infested air into dry, dusty graves.

The old, the young, one by one succumbed to the invisible—yet horribly present—yellow death, until Sabastian held his dying father’s hand, the last of their humble people. And when time set their count from two to one, the youth took what supplies he could—remembering to thank the spirits haunting that place for their provisions—and headed upstream, following the many sent ahead searching for the cause of this tragedy.

And so begins our tale.