He Kalliste - 1. He Kalliste

He Kalliste (The most beautiful)

The moment a god loses their last worshipper, their power disappears and they will be forgotten.

(Érasmos of Kalliste)

Jacques leaned over the yellowed nautical chart, nervously smoothing out its creases. For a while, his hand hovered over beside a handwritten sequence of numbers. “What’s here, Dad?” he murmured. “What will I find here?” As his father had been a sought-after specialist for several old languages, especially classical Greek, he had discovered many long-forgotten artifacts through translating, interpreting, and cross-referencing ancient texts.

He had found the chart when they cleaned out his father’s office at the museum after his death. Jacques had tried to make sense of the numbers for months. Being a chart, the most obvious would be longitude, latitude, and altitude for the first part of the sequence. The next could be a time of day. The last three numbers, however, had always thrown him. Until he realized they were his dad’s favorite numbers, 17, 19, and 49. The old man had probably added those to confuse people who weren’t meant to read the chart.

After checking his diving gear for the last time, Jacques pulled up his wetsuit, slipped his arms into the sleeves, anticipating becoming one with the endless blue that was the Mediterranean Sea. It felt as if the water was waiting for him. When coolness finally surrounded him, tranquility flowed through him as it always did when he was diving. He carefully turned around, looking at the compass to orient himself, when he noticed two dolphins heading his way. It almost appeared as if they had been waiting for him. He grinned when one pushed its snout playfully against his hand. For a while, they circled each other, until one of them suddenly vanished into a cave. Jacques frowned. He couldn’t remember seeing a cave indicated on the chart, even though it was otherwise very precise.

After a long moment, the dolphin came back, wriggling its body in a strange way as if it were asking him, ‘What are you waiting for? Follow me!’

Jacques knew he shouldn’t enter an unknown underwater structure without backup. When the other dolphin nudged him in the direction where its partner was waiting, he pushed the voice of reason, which sounded suspiciously like his old diving instructor, into his mind’s background and let curiosity win. For the first several meters, he swam through a dark passageway until it opened into a large, rectangular room strangely illuminated by diffuse, viridescent light. How was this even possible? Where is the light coming from, this far away from the surface of the sea? he thought.There had to be nothing but solid rock above him.

The walls of the room shimmered eerily, making them strangely transparent looking. Jacques shook his head. For a moment, he thought he could detect a line of white, Doric columns supporting extended eaves all the way around the room. He blinked. “Are there people wearing ancient Greek robes on the outside?” Jacques quickly lifted his camera and took several photos. One of the walls wobbled slightly when a dolphin swam right through it as if the animal disturbed a reflection by passing through a watery surface. But they were already underwater. “Impossible.” He turned a few times around his own axis.

This looked like a mirage of Hephaistos’ temple in Athens. In the center of the room stood a larger-than-life statue of a man holding a hammer and chisel. This was definitely the Greek god of blacksmiths, craftsmen, builders, and artisans. Swimming closer, Jacques noticed a stone chest standing at its feet. Contrary to the pristine condition of the statue, it was shattered. On the remnants of the lid sat a bright, white stone cube with strange engravings on the sides. He took it in his hand and the mirage disappeared--only the shattered chest was left. He tried to reverse the effect, to no avail. The mirage was gone.

When he examined the chest further, his heart began to beat rapidly. Inside were mostly intact stone tablets. After hesitating briefly, he very slowly pulled one of them out and shone his torch at it. The script was ancient Greek.

Jacques knew what he needed to do next. He would call his boss at the museum. Christos would be stoked.

Two years later

Jacques touched the golden plaque at the entrance of the new wing. The museum had named it the Nathan Amal Exhibition Hall to honor his father’s work, especially the twenty-one stone tablets they had found in the underwater cave two years ago. Unfortunately, he had left no documentation about how he detected its location. Jacques assumed he had read something about it when working with an unknown ancient text. They had looked for the original passages but hadn’t found anything. It was extremely untypical of his father to not document such an important discovery. It was even stranger that he hadn’t made it public. He must have been down in the cave at one time as he had noted the exact coordinates on the chart.

Jacques watched visitors milling about, their phones or tablet computers in hand, comparing the texts the museum app showed them with the replicas of the stone tablets. Others admired the Hephaistos statue archeologists had found ten years ago buried in the sea and only recently linked with the stone tablets. By the feet of the statue stood the re-assembled stone chest, in the same way he had seen in the cave.

When Jacques had found the photos he took didn’t show anything of the underwater temple, but only the chest, the tablets, and the white cube, he didn’t tell anyone about the mirage. There were times he thought it might have been a figment of his imagination.

Jacques’ favorite place in the new wing were the three loveseats in the corner by one of the windows overlooking the sea. He walked over, sat down, grabbed one of the headphones lying on a small side table, and put them on, then leaned back and listened to Christos’ wonderful deep voice.

You are hearing a chronicle by Érasmos of Kalliste, set down in twenty-one stone tables for posterity.

When the gods sensed the numbers of their worshippers dwindling, and the strength of their faith was waning, they tasked Hephaistos to build them a new city with many temples that would attract new believers.

Therefore, Hephaistos went to the island of Paros and created a cornerstone from white marble. Each god of the Parthenon touched it and infused it with their divinity.

When he thought he’d found the perfect spot for their new city, he buried the cornerstone where its center would be.

Attracted by the cornerstone’s divine power, a nomadic clan set up their camp and built an altar for the goddess Hestia. The surrounding forest was rich with game and edible plants. Near by rivers were full of fish. The clansmen found everything they needed in abundance and after a while, they were even able to trade some of the meat, furs, and fruit for goods they couldn’t make themselves. The clan stayed longer and longer and never moved on.

The new village became a thriving trading post that was soon known all over for the exceptional quality of their wares; the settlement grew. Eventually, however, hunting and the gathering of plants and fruit didn’t provide enough food for the increasing population anymore. As the soil proved fertile, now undulating grain fields surrounded the village. Later, olive groves and vineyards were added. Goats and sheep grazed in the meadows, and the forest was mostly used to obtain wood for the construction of buildings and ships.

Trade shifted from game and furs to farming products. To meet the growing demand for food, farmers had to build an elaborate system of irrigation that allowed the intense cultivation of the ever-increasing acreage.

Soon a net of well-developed roads connected the city with other settlements and cities to further trade. Some of the merchants had ships built to reach faraway countries and coasts so they could expand their range of products and offer foreign and wondersome wares to surpass the other merchants.

Powerful merchant families competed with each other for leadership. They tried to outperform the others in almost everything: the number of wagons and ships, the greatness of their houses, and the lavishness of the temples they had built to thank the gods for their benevolence and to bribe them to support them further.

As the city became bigger, architects, builders, metalworkers, and artists were drawn to the prospering city. Soon people called the city He Kalliste, the most beautiful.

The population rapidly increased; even outer districts were populated and smaller villages were founded along the coastline.

The number of grateful worshippers grew every day, their faith unwavering, and the gods were finally powerful once again. The cornerstone had achieved the very thing it had been created for.

The riches, power, and beauty of the city aroused envy and desires. He Kalliste was attacked several times by other cities, but her strong city walls and leadership withstood any siege.

For a long time, the descendants of the original clan chief successfully led the city. Then a rival killed the current ruler insidiously. Only he undertook too much. He was overwhelmed by the takeover and struggled with control over He Kalliste. Political chaos ensued.

In the midst of this political disorder came the second blow: three consecutive droughts. Providing food after the extreme population explosion of previous years had depleted the soil and cleared many forests; therefore, the farming industry failed. There wasn’t a strong ruler anymore to ensure a reasonable distribution of the remaining resources. The result was a lack of food, and hunger permeated the city’s citizens.

Her position weakened, He Kalliste’s enemies saw their chance, joined forces, and attacked.

Many people died, others left.

Those who stayed thought the god responsible for their misfortune, misery, and spreading of plagues.

In the end, Hephaistos removed the cornerstone, and the city slowly fell apart and became forgotten.

The screen of Jacques’ phone lit up and it vibrated. It was a text from Christos. ‘Come quick, I found the passage of text we were looking for!’

It took him a while to understand what this meant. When he finally did, he ripped the headphones from his ears, threw them clattering on the side table, and hurried to the curator’s office on the second floor, barely avoiding running into any visitors in his haste. When he reached the right door, he didn't bother knocking, but pushed it open with so much force it slammed into the wall.

Christos was bent over his desk, staring at an open book. When he heard the loud ‘bang’, he wasn’t angry but grinned excitedly. “I found it, Jacques! I remembered Nathan told me years ago he had hidden some notes which could turn out to be important one day in the office he took over from Efstatia for a few months. In his words, he only needed to verify some things before he’d show them to me. He seemed to be afraid someone else would find out what he did and ruin the excavation site because they would prove untrustworthy. The visitors needed to be respectful of the god’s emissaries. I admit I thought it was him being quirky.”

“The god’s emissaries?”

“Look at this.” Christos showed him a photo of a clay vase engraved with an emblem of two dolphins. “It was stored with the book.”

“What does the emblem represent?”

“It’s He Kallistes’ coat of arms.”

Jacques’ eyes widened in understanding, and he whispered, “The two dolphins that led me to the cave.”

“Exactly.”

Jacques remembered the mirage of Hephaistos’ temple he had never told anyone about. It had disappeared the moment he’d lifted the marble cube. “The cornerstone....”

“Yeah....”

“Are you telling me you believe the marble cube that is sitting in the museum’s vault is the original cornerstone? That Hephaistos made it, and the other gods blessed it?”

“I don’t know. But listen to this text passage your father marked in his transcript.”

‘And Hephaistos collected Érasmos’ chronicle, built a stone chest for it, and hid it on the floor of the sea together with the cornerstone, so no one should know of the gods’ failure until it was time to learn from their errors.’

I'd like to thank @Valkyrie, for her invaluable help and keen editing. Thank @Thorn Wilde, for perfect proofing and  the explanations, loved those.
Comments and reactions are always welcome.