Suktul, the Argonian Who Hated Time

The concept Imperials called “time” did not have a word in Glim’s native language Jel. In fact, the hardest part of learning the language of the Imperials was that they made their verbs different to indicate when something had happened, as if the most important thing in the world was to establish a linear sequence of events, as if doing so somehow explained things better than holistic apprehension.

To Glim’s people – at least the most traditional ones – birth and death were the same moment. All of life – all of history – was one moment, and only by ignoring most of its content could one create the illusion of linear progression. The agreement to see things in this limited way was what other peoples called “time”.

page 90, Infernal City

The Mijxhleel Tribe is one of true Saxhleel, traditional in their actions and perspective, fierce protectors of the rivers and the mud, and devout servants of their Hist tree, a great being in the middle of the Mijxhleel village with as many branches as all the Saxhleel from the eastern coast to the great grassland of the west.

Elves come from the west. Saxhleel of Mijxhleel stab them with poisoned spikes and drown them with water magics, so elves of the west go away and build villages of stone in the North. Dark Elves come from the North. The Dark Elves take a few of Mijxhleel but the rest stay to protect the village. Men come from the west, led by a Godking. Mijxhleel and the rest of the tribes kill them like how they kill the Elves, and the armed men leave, but some men stay and make some wooden huts near the Mijxhleel village, with rows of yellow plants on the huts' sides that the men harvest and eat.

Little hatchling emerges from his egg. Hatchling licks the Hist in the middle of the village and is named Suktul. Suktul is Muziul is Taleel is Deeza is Melutul and 600 more names, all bound inside the branches of the Hist tree.

Suktul is a good hunter and a bold warrior. He can throw a stone javelin into the eye of a faraway animal and spear a fleeing Histcarp in murky waters. Suktul is like his 600 other selves in this regard.

Suktul patrols the marshland surrounding the Mijhxleel village with his Egg Brothers and protects the Hist. Suktul hunts with his Egg Brothers in the place where the three small streams intersect the big stream and returns to the village. Suktul's egg brother, who is named Jiluil, finds a small man touching the Hist's branches. Jiluil is confused and angered because men are not allowed to touch the Hist and does not know what to do, so he brings the small man to Suktul because Suktul is cleverer and better knows the tradition of Mijxhleel.

Suktul hears that a small man touches the Hist and is extremely angered. Out of sheer anger Suktul cuts off the small man's head with his stone macuahuitl and displays the small man's head on a spike near the Hist tree to repel the other men from touching the Hist.

Suktul goes to visit Wusha, who he is collecting amethysts for so he can mate and dance the dance of rebirth with her. Wusha tells Suktul that the men in the wooden huts are angry because of Suktul killing the small man and want to talk to Suktul.

Suktul knows that the men do not speak the Jel of the Hist so he acquires the aid of another male of the Mijxhleel that knows the unthoughtful words of the men of the west and meets the local men. The men are angry and have water spilling out of their eyes like tiny weak waterfalls. The leader of the men, who Suktul's mother tells him never to talk to or trust because he is a prophet of wrong deities, claims that what Suktul does is bad and that the small man's body should be given back to the men so that they can give it the proper treatment of “Ar-kay”. Suktul says that this shall be done but the men's anger and weak waterfalls are not gone. Suktul asks why. Suktul's translator says that the men claim that they are sad because the small man was killed despite him being “Yang”.

Suktul asks what “Yang” means. The translator does not know and asks the men what “Yang” is. The bad prophet man explains that the small man's death is bad because the small man is only alive for a small “Taym”. Suktil is angered by all the confusing words and nonsense that his translator cannot translate and asks the bad prophet man to not lie or speak in riddles. The bad prophet man is startled and thinks and says that the small man sees only about 3600 suns and 7200 moons.

Suktul is angry and cannot understand the man's nonsense so he tells the man that he is stupid and that he should be practicing his talking like a how Saxhleel practices fishing so that the man can speak without nonsense.

The men depart and Suktul shouts obscenities at them telling them that their head-feathers look like his feces and that they lack a cloaca. Suktul turns away and walks, chanting the word “Taym” which he thinks is a stupid word and returns to Wusha's hut, but is thrown out by Wusha's father who tells Suktul to be in his own home.

The Saxhleel of Mijxhleel see 6200 suns and 12400 moons and hunt and fish. The men in the wooden huts come out and talk with the Mijxhleel and Suktul and others learn their language, though still many words do not make sense to Suktul like “Taym” and “Old”.

Suktul wakes up because of noise and yelling and shouting and comes to the middle of the village where there are most of the Mijhxleel and the Treespeaker Katul standing by the Hist tree, that is ugly and black and has thin leaves with many holes in them and no green color.

Katul shouts that a great catastrophe is upon the village and that the Mijxhleel tree is punished for sin by the other Hist trees and that the Mijxhleel tree is purged from the Great Root. Everyone in the village is quiet and Katul looks at the mud below him where the other bodies of the Mijxhleel Saxhleel are buried and says that because the Hist tree is purged that a dead Mijxhleel cannot live. The Mijxhleel are startled and Wusha's father asks if there is no more rebirth. Katul croaks and says “Xhu”.

The Mijxhleel are angry and sad but Suktul is not because even if the Hist tree is purged and there is no rebirth, Suktul still loves Wusha and wishes to mate with her, and he has 3 perfectly shaped amethysts that he has from a rock in the river and the wall of a cave and the stomach of an animal of Suktul's hunt.

Suktul is happy and goes to Wusha's hut to present her the three amethysts and reaches the hut, but he finds it collapsed with fire and smoke flying out of it. Suktul panics and digs through the rubble and burns his hands but is dragged away by his egg brother Jiluil.

Jiluil tells Suktul that he is not able to save Wusha and that Wusha is dead. Suktul yells at Jiluil and tells him to know Katul's words that said that whoever in the tribe is dead cannot be alive. Jiluil rubs his fingers together and says that Wusha is dead.

Suktul's spine extends because of his anger and black spiked bones emerge from Suktul's back. Suktul screams and stabs Juliul with his dagger but remembers that whoever is dead cannot be alive and decides that the terrible catastrophe is all the fault of the purged Hist, so Suktul runs to the middle of the village where the withering Hist tree is and tackles it and chops its branches to small pieces with his Macuahuitl. The tribe and Katul sees Suktul's action and Katul rushes to him and tells him that he is exiled and must leave the village.

Suktul runs away and hunts in the wilderness in his lonesome like a beast, killing any animal in his sight. Suktul does this and sees 4000 more suns and 8000 more moons.

Suktul is hunting and he hears a scream behind him and turns and sees a woman he recognizes as one of those that live in the wooden huts. He senses the woman is startled by his sneaking and approaches her standing, attempting to speak to her with what little of her language he knows, but the woman runs away. Suktul follows her and sees that she is running to the wooden huts. 12 men then come and see Suktul, one of them Suktul recognizes as the bad prophet man. The bad prophet man recognizes Suktul back. The bad prophet asks Suktul why he is hunting alone and Suktul replies that he is an exile and that he is not accepted by his tribe. The man leads Suktul to a big wooden hut with gem windows in multiple colors that show illustrations of 4 men and 3 women and a big central illustration of a winged serpent like how the cave paintings of the Mixjhleel show half-Hist half-Saxhleel.

Suktul and the prophet man go inside and the prophet man gives Suktul a circular disk with a weird brown meat on it. Suktul eats the meat, which does not taste like meat but rather like a plant. Suktul eats and asks the prophet man who the men and women on the windows are. The man says they are eight of the nine gods of the western men. There is silence and Suktul eats. “Why are you in exile?” The prophet man asks.

“It is because of the death of a loved one and the killing of another,” Suktul answers and rubs his fingers.

“A loved one?” the prophet man asks.

Suktul does not wish to discuss these things with the western man but reluctantly answers “Wusha.”

The prophet man looks puzzled, and quietly exclaims, “Wusha? The fern-gathering one? I thought she died a long time ago.”

Suktul turns to the prophet man, his mouth curled downwards, his scaled face in an expression of contempt. “This word of yours, man of western plains, you include it in between every one of your sentences, as if to call out a false name to which you direct your thoughts. Who is this time? What does it have to do with Wusha’s death?”

The prophet man smiles as he realizes Suktul’s question. “Time is the blessing of Akatosh, mightiest of the divines,” the prophet man says, “it is the great advancement of all that there is. The moons you see in the sky do not add up. There are not thousands of moons and many big stars, only two moons and a single great star, Magnus. The moons are in an infinite cycle, invisible when the sun is visible and visible when the sun is not. But… but these are not the same. These states occur one after another, like how the pillars of this building come one after another but are not in the same location.”

Suktul is baffled by the man’s words. “So, you say,” Suktul says in a quiet, disoriented tone, “As one thing is not, another is true. And this is itself another concept beyond what is and what is not. As with how Wusha is dead and I am alive. But… but she is dead within this time. In the other time, the time that came before this time, like the pillar behind that one beside me, she was alive. Leel meez axh!”

Suktul leaned back and stared at the window illustrations of the western man’s divines, slowly turning his head until his eyes met the central illustration at the head of the hut, of the serpentine lizard with two wings and a coiled tail, the lizard’s eye staring into Suktul’s eyes and the soul that the purged hist had given him but will not rebreathe into the eyes of Suktul’s reincarnation.

“You curse-giving monster of death!” Suktul shouted at the illustration, springing up to his feet. “You killed Wusha, for Wusha was but now she is not. And you shall kill me, too, for now I am and soon I shall be not. Why have you come to our lands, Time, why have you brought your greedy worshippers, why have you withered our Hist and killed our predecessors. Reverse yourself, I beg you. I beg you, please give me back my love and my Hist, and send me back to my other lives so I do not have to live this one miserably.”

The priest stared at Suktul in silence, wishing he could do more. He has seen Argonians refuse to worship the Imperial gods before, but never had one outright exclaimed their hatred of a divine. “Time cannot reverse itself,” the priest said. “It is set in one path and maintained by Akatosh, greatest of the divines, and if you would accept his blessings then surely time would work better in your behalf.”

Suktul looked at his hands. His scales were translucent and soft, his claws brown and ugly. “Your time god cannot bless me,” Suktul said, “it can only wither and kill.”

Suktul let out a screech, a final obscenity in the language of neither his people nor the time god’s, a wrathful cry of surrender. Suktul ran, sprinting with the last of his life’s stamina, and bashed into the glass of the temple’s dyed window, crashing into the revered dragon and shattering the window into thousands of crystalline blades, all stabbing deep into the old Argonian’s skin. Suktul fell on the ground outside the temple, his blood soaking into the mud as the sound of the window’s shattering continued to ring through the air.

Years later, Julianus Teralus was writing his book on running a temple in the Empire’s loosely controlled province of Black Marsh and contemplated the story of the old Argonian who hated time. He wondered how the priests back in Cyrodiil would take to the idea of a hostile rejection of the Imperial belief. He decided it would only be discouraging to write about the few failures out of the hundreds of successful assimilations of Argonians in his efforts, and concluded his book with the words “As such, I promise you, readers, that despite the Argonians’ seemingly savage way of life, they are of a similar mind to ours and as such can be brought to the light of the divines equally as well as the people of the other provinces.” And that was the end of Suktul’s story.