Marduk the Ahkula stood idly by the decrepit form of his mother.

She had been corrupted by the Curse of Self, a horrid mark that ripped and tore away at the soul, at the core and physical of a person until they were wilted like nothing.

A Husk of mind and body left only the option of being put down.

“If I was told by killing you I could rid myself of this Curse, I would do it in an instant” His mother growled out in a bitter hate filled tone as her slit black pupils saw right through the facade of her smartest child.

He was one of seven, having three brothers and three sisters though by now they had all abandoned the Ahkula tribe in search of a world that did not despise them.

Marduk stood in abject silence as he felt the crushing weight of something grip his heart and weight down on his person. In that moment if he’d blinked he would have missed the second his mother took her last breath and succumbed to the poisonous rot that all spell bearers, flingers and makers are one day stricken by.

An illness borne of the innate perversion of life’s sacred laws, to draw on the power of the world and the gods to make it of their own and wield it as they may.

While his mother was destined for such a fate, this was not the issue.

She was the youngest to ever be taken, a young Seer of only sixteen winters who had fought against the Curse for nearly four years, at first hardly affecting her, but before long all but consumed her.

What she had spoken of to her son in those final moments was the closest thing she had done to becoming sane again, no thought so full and realised had emitted from her so in nearly two of those four years.

The nature of his mothers Curse understood by few and known by fewer was cause for fear and trepidation even amongst friends and those once called close, all fled in terror of its spread, that brood produced with those involved with the afflicted might be malformed and arise as grotesques.

He was all that remained, siblings departed for other tribes in hopes of recovering their standings and resuming life without the shadow of the Curse. But he was a fool, a fool who would not let the suffering of another go untreated, this served only to further discontent about his nature that it would only continue to take those innocent Suarians that tread the same path as he.

Marduk was a Saurian whose newly turned adulthood was being squandered, outcast by his peers causing a rift between himself and the greater Tribe of Ahkula who all once revered his now parted mother.

Looking upon the cold form laying on hides he sucked in a breath momentarily before releasing a heavy sigh.

“What am I to do?” He asked the silence enveloping the hut with no response.

His mind entangled with thoughts, none of which were clear, none of which showed what he should do.

No place to call home, no family to share, a tribe who cursed him far greater than that which took his mother.

It took some time for Marduk to overcome his Lizard coding and feel something greater than emptiness, it was par for the course of being a Saurian and he’d come to accept that the day he’d woken in this body, but from time to time he would forget who he was. Consumed by the blunt coldness of the superstitious bipedal lizard peoples.

There was a code with which all Saurians were birthed under, a blessing, a reminder and a right:

Remember, that we all are brothers,

All people, beasts and trees,

The stone and wind

That we all descend from the four great beings

Which were always there

Before the ancestors lived and named them

Before the first seeds sprouted

But this also meant you were nothing before the four great beings, we were bound to their law, the law of Nature. The weak die and the strong exist, though it left room for the weak to be cared for it was only insofar as it let them die a death which wasn’t forced to aided by outside forces.

Such was the case of his mother.

He would need to make a choice, to live a new life which would still be something that abided by the Four great beings.

Finding it in himself to move once again Marduk retrieved a large leather satchel with a vine spun strap from the opposite corner of the hut as well as a belt fit to hold the bone and obsidian blades common among the Saurians around Mt. Duranki. His tribe, the Ahkula being one of many that traded with the Salamanders of the Volcano who harvested the purplish-black glass from around the mountain.

Packing the satchel with what little he could call his own he left through the colourful cloth flap that was used as a door, heading out of the village along the wooden stabilisers in the muck of the jungle swamp he continued without pause.

His life wouldn’t start anew until he was long gone.

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The hulking form of the nearly nine foot tall Marduk trudged through a mangrove using his nearly seven and a half foot long tail to keep balance as he moved.

It was deep into the second day of walking now, he had moved a great deal from his Tribes home to the near coastal areas around the Great Azul, a two kilometre wide and some ninety long river that passed through the Basin from the western edge waterfalls of Nymphelia to the eastern pass of Ochre.

Despite his size Marduk was far from the largest creature lurking in the Basin, he was not even among the largest of the Saurians who were from the Tribe Bahl’umar who were known to stand ten to twelve feet tall with even bulkier frames. Furthermore his size was common amongst the Ahkula, though his tribe and the Bahl are amongst the largest with all other tribes remaining smaller and more sleek instead of the crocodilian and monstrous appearance of the other two.

But he needn’t worry for his fellow Saurian, what he was weary of were Hydra, gigantic four headed snake like monsters that were masters of striking from shadows. As well were the fierce Titanoboa which lurked in the mangroves especially beneath the mud waiting for their time to strike.

Worst of all was the time in which he had set out, it was the height of mating season amongst the Hydra, he would need to navigate the mangroves carefully as not to encroach on a nest, monsters in the act or what remained after the act. Female Hydra’s were known for being the dominant and more aggressive of the pair tearing in half entire tribes when disturbed with senses fine turned to hunt their prey for miles and the strength to snape even the greatest of trees in half with ease.

Travelling alone was all the more dangerous for this.

For now at least, it was quiet, the only sounds beyond those sloshing wet noises of moving through water were birds singing which for Marduk was a good thing. If the birds sang, it was safe, if they stopped… he was probably already inside the stomach of a monster.

Or thats how he would have preferred things, but the world could not always be so simple-

“Shit” He cursed in a foreign tongue to the Suran language as he laid his eyes upon the scene of what otherwise would have appeared a crime.

But here, here it was normal.

He had climbed into a small grove where the land rose out of the water and in the centre of the a brown mass of branches and other foliage were five balled up human sized eggs, next to the nest was the corpse of a young Brownish-green scaled male hydra roughly the size of a logging truck.

It was at this point he realised he had fucked up.

“Grrr” A loud deep tone growled as he her jaws snapping shut angrily behind him, his senses having failed to notice anything.

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When he finally dared to turn and meet his end, what he saw only added insult to injury as he realised the large mount of earth he’d thought he had walked over was the body of a Queen Hydra, otherwise affectionately termed ‘Queen Amazon’ by Marduk himself when he was younger.

She was easily as large as a Mega Mining truck from his previous life, had five long necks supporting draconic heads that looked as though they ought to be spitting fire and not toxic venom that corroded everything it touched. The rest of its body was long and sleek with the majority of her scales being dark purple with a lavender on her underside scales. Each of the heads had a different set of eye colours, from left to right was red, green, gold, blue and pink, as they raised into the air however all but the golden eyed head looked around over the trees.

Golden eyes focussed intently on him before looking past toward her brood.

His heart raced.

Ba dump ba dump ba dump

Not only the ire of the female hydra but a Queen of all things.

‘I’m going to die’ he thought grimly as he closed his eyes and waited.

The draconic head was all but against his chest as the hot huff of air leaving the nostrils of the gigantic monster had enough force behind it that it almost pushed Marduk over.

He held his breath awaiting the cold pain of shard teeth puncturing his scales and killing him.

However, it did not come.

Another huff of air caused him to stumble backward on uneven footing, his eyes opening and looking up at the creature.

It blinked at him and opened its mouth-

“What. Cause. You.” It spoke in a rumbling deep tone that reverberated in his core.

“...” Marduk's jaw hung open, but no words came forth.

His mind blank, unable to draw forth thought except for one thing.

‘It spoke?’

As he understood it, there were no mentions in the oral histories of the Ahkula that indicated anything even remotely like this happening. No tribesman had even encountered such a thing, or at least none had and lived to survive.

Its grasp of Language was left wanting, but it was clear what it asked of him.

“Why am I here?” He repeated back to the golden eyed head.

It nodded, holding its fierce glare at him.

He’d never expected to be questioned let alone by a monster he’d previously never thought capable of speech.

This compounding in the issue that he had no idea how to answer its question.

“I… am… going to Azul.” He said after a long pause of thought, unsure what else there was to say.

He’d set out with little in mind for what to do when he arrived at whichever place stopped his march first.

Part of his mind was working purely on autopilot taking him to places he had once travelled as a Sukkal, a type of divine courier who went around delivering the visions which Seers were given to those they were about. He and his siblings all did this prior to their mothers affliction.

“That. Here. Not.” She replied in broken Suran.

“It is on the other side of the mangrove.” He said finding his confidence in such an awkward situation.

“Go. Now. There.” The Queen Hydra said, motioning her head in such a way to indicate where he should leave.

Without needing it to be said again(though he doubt it would have been) he bolted away as fast as he could, though he would never truly be faster than the enormous draconic headed monster it was part of his self preservation to keep as far from a situation like this again.

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It was the end of the second day when Marduk finally laid eyes on the bank of the Azul.

Standing in the shallow of the mangroves he took his time to admire the wide channel before marching forward in the direction he remembered the village of Ur-Nikkal being in. It was home to a tribe of the same name who were smaller and far more serpentine than his tribe, he knew them to be proud worshippers of the sky God Quetzal as such their defining feature was a tall stone ziggurat built near the coast of the river.

He never understood where it was they acquired the stone for such a creation, but it certainly was a testament to one of the Four Great Beings. A genuine marvel of the Saurian world as cut off from the world outside The Great Basin as it was.

One thing Marduk noticed as he made his way up stream so to say, was how much brighter all the greenery was and bluer the water appeared taking on a translucent teal colour which he much preferred over the dreary dark blue water of the Ahkula swamp.

As Lord Amna, the great golden light descended from the sky, however the day became dark and the crocodilian man moved to find somewhere to rest, he hadn’t eaten all day and his encounter with the Hydra had stripped him of his appetite until now.

Aside from looking for fish to eat he needed to be wary of Naiads, the water spirits that inhabited much of the waterways around the Basin. They were some kind of Faerie but he wasn’t entirely sure of it, all he knew for sure is that they caused trouble for everyone they encountered and though those who met them always came away alive it was not always for the better that they came away at all.

Finding a place to rest wasn’t too difficult for him as the further along the bank of the Azul he moved the less there was of the mangrove as it turned to grassland and made way for much more solid ground for him to walk along and the land itself pushed back some ways to forests.

Finally after marching for almost two days straight however he sat down and the fatigue of it all caught up with him, while Saurians were known for their constitutions and endurance he had worn thin what he was capable of by not sleeping or stopping for longer than what it took to climb over obstacles.

“Haa…” Marduk sighed as he laid back on the grassy patch he’d found, his thoughts catching up with him as well.

‘I think it’s time I figure out what I want to do with this life.’

‘I’ve been letting the world guide my hand for far too long, I need to take matters into my own hands finally.’

‘I didn’t really make much of waking up in a new body with memories of a different life, maybe it should have taken precedent sooner, but then again there was that saying-’

“You have two lives, the second begins when you realise you only have one” He spoke the words aloud as if to invoke them unto the world that it might respond in kind.

It reminded him of another quote

‘Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now take what's left and live it properly.’ They were once meaningless platitudes, he’d heard them, but he did not feel them.

He’d known them, but he did not understand them.

But now, all this way along in a life that could be called his true second, he felt as if he understood them.

At the same time, the four great beings were a weight every action wore now matter how much one wished to shake free of it, perhaps a time would come when he could break from it?