The Other Gods

This is a story that was originally told by the bard Phillip of the Craft. No bard had told it before, and few since, due to both the strangeness of its subject and its complete and utter unpopularity. However, those who heard it cannot help but wonder, as there is something about the tale which sticks in the mind. Attend to me: perhaps if I tell it to you, I will not have to think of it myself.

I once met a sage - I of course being Phillip, not myself, as I am telling the story as I heard it. Be quiet and listen! - who had spent his life considering the gods. His hair was wild and unkempt, his clothes tattered, and his eyes had in them an unholy spark. I would have passed him by, but he grabbed my arm with unlikely strength, and bade me eat with him.

This I consented to do, somewhat for fear of him, and somewhat for respect: after all, he was an old man. And this is what he told me, over the weevil-ridden biscuits that we shared.

"The gods," he said, "are six, and form a cube." I agreed, since this is something that any child knows.

"But doesn't this very fact mean that there must be too other gods?" he asked. I could not understand what he was saying, and replied as much.

"It does. I will show you." And with that, he took from his tattered robe a wooden box. "North, south, east, west, top, bottom, and two more." I shook my head.

"No? But look!" And with that he opened the box. "Inside..." He closed the box again. "And outside! Ha!" With that, he pressed the box into my hands, leapt up, and ran down the road. I was left to consider what he had said.

If there are two more gods, why doesn't anyone worship them? Perhaps the inside god is the god of everything known and understood. Who could worship such? Familiarity, after all, breeds contempt, and this is the god of all things familiar, the god of existence.

But if that is the inside god, than what of the outside god? The god of all things unknown, the god of all things incomprehensible, the god of nothing, of nullity, of utter non-being. Who could worship such? But what if there is such a being? And what if, like the other gods, it wants more for itself. Would such a god want to convert us? Or just to annihilate us, more totally than the Unnamed, who only wishes to end us. The Outer god would wish for us to never exist and to never have existed...

That is the tale that Phillip told me, and the tale that I have told you. It weighs upon my mind, and I cannot be rid of it. Sometimes, in the darkness, I fancy I can hear the voice of the outer god. It is speaking to me, in words I can never hope to understand, but its message is clear none the less.