Deep in Africa, hidden within the darkness of a granite cave, an old man sat motionless and silent in his ceaseless calling.
All his wisdom and power was vested in his silent concentration, honed by weeks of austerities and savage discipline. He had been sitting motionless in the crystalline sacred cave for days. His ears were roaring with the silence but he reached with all his experience to call a spirit that he had never seen. Stretching in an endless line from antiquity the old man summoned his spectral ancestors to aid him. Reciting their names he called the images before him and exhorted them to call for their ancient god - long gone from the land and remembered only in ancient whispers and tribal memory.
In answer, a vast presence sensed the distant wisp of thought in the immense humming of its ecstasy. But the susurration of the endless energy of the universe dissipated the feeble calling until the old presence settled back into the bliss of the land, the rich earth between the roots of mighty trees, the crystal magnificence in the hidden folds of hardened rock.. Its vast power lived in eternal bliss coiled in deep caves and rippling in the shimmer of grasslands, in the ecstatic rivers of pure gold far beneath the brief flutters of human life.
A brief regret for consciousness - the savage, raw joy of awareness, flared for an instant as ancient memories of the flexing of mighty coils and roaming in the world of sun and water briefly coalesced. But the brief awareness wafted away on streams of unconscious bliss. The old man, seated in his small fragile body, sensed that stir and his soul leaped in response. But his involuntary shout echoed away in the silence of the cave and he knew his efforts had been in vain.
Discouraged, the High Priest of the land emerged from the sacred tunnels. His priests supported his body, weakened after his long ordeal, and they walked down towards their stone temple. Their land Manwe Mutape was dying - baking under a harsh sun with no blessing of rain. Their King was dying of a wasting disease as if he himself had been cursed. The High priest swallowed back his disappointed human anger and began planning how to demand the attention of the snake spirit. He needed a living avatar - one with enough power to call back the glory of power back to their kingdom
