Historical Record
A Thursday Prompt story
© 2024 by Walter Reimer

Prompt: salvation

Thumbnail art by  technicolor_pie, color by  Major Matt Mason



The recording was ancient; so old that it boggled the young Indochinese leopard’s mind. If he could believe what he was told, the images he was seeing were several hundred millennia older than the oldest Terran civilization. The twelve-year old and his younger brother didn’t believe when their tutor had told them about how old it was, but after looking at it – well, seeing was believing.

The original was lost to history, so this was a recording of a recording, painstakingly restored and updated to a holographic format and colorized. The difference between Kashlanin and Terran imaging protocols was apparent in the occasional flickers and random data dropouts.

“Why are you looking at this again, Vlad?” Farukh asked. “We saw it last week.”

Vladmir nodded, his gaze still locked on the recording. “Yeah, I know, but I want to see it again.”

“I’m going to go see if they have lunch ready,” the younger leopard said, getting to his feet and leaving the young Emperor alone to watch the recording.

The recording showed a closeup of a male shlan in a uniform, with a sword at his hip and a pistol in a shoulder holster. He looked like he’d been through a rough time, with part of his tail and one ear missing and scars showing on his face, and he stood facing a crowd of shlan dressed in robes. As he watched, they all knelt in homage to the scarred kam as two priests bearing axes entered the view, followed by a senior priest.

The two axe-bearers stood alongside the uniformed shlan as the senior priest knelt. “My Lord, the Houses are assembled here, in the sight of the Deities, to acclaim you.”

The kam looked around at the assembly and replied, “I am prepared.”

The senior priest rose. “Weary years before, we lifted our hands against each other, in our ignorance and intolerance,” he said. “Only you, Zrand son of Kazid, had the vision to see the Race as one, and you have dedicated your life to that holy cause, and taken upon yourself a holy burden.”

“I have,” Zrand said, “and I bear the costs of that burden.”

“We acclaim you now, Zrand son of Kazid, of the House n’Lanya, as Knegrhek, Savior, for you have saved the Race by unifying it,” the priest said. He knelt again. “May your reign be long, and may your House rule over us forever, for it is to you we owe our salvation.”

Vladmir watched, his spotted tail swishing.

He’d read about Zrand, about how he’d waged war until all the various sovereignties on Gwath ka-shlal had become one Empire. How he’d labored until another war, this one to heal the planet’s wounds, had ended in victory before he finally surrendered his burden to his son and died.

Vladmir thought that it had been an accomplishment worthy of an Emperor.

Now if only he could convince other Terrans. He still had six years before he could rule without the Regency Council, and he sighed.

Well, there might be way. He just had to find it.