Tsuk’ruk was in his element, singing to a cheering crowd gathered around the fire. It was hard to tell whether his merry ballad provoked the most applause or whether it was the performance of the dancer. The audience burst into laughter when she made a funny face, acting out the peak moment of his song—just as her throat was pierced by an arrow that came out of nowhere. The crowd’s joy was cut short, turning into cries of terror as crimson blood burst from the dancer's mouth. Tsuk’ruk threw down his instrument and jumped towards the horses, catching a glimpse of the arrow’s fletching. It was snow white: they were attacked by the Moon Kingdom.

Tsuk’ruk’s tribe and the Moon Kingdom had always been allies, even before it rose to power. Apparently, the spreading empire had decided to swallow its neighbors. As an enemy army marched relentlessly from the east, Tsuk’ruk’s tribe ran for their lives, leaving behind tents and flocks.

Watching his people decimated, Tsuk’ruk had to act. He was no fighter, and no warrior can fight an entire kingdom. Tsuk’ruk was a shaman. But what spirits could stop a marching army?

Out of all the statues in the tribe capital’s temple tent, Tsuk’ruk approached the one standing right in the center—the forbidden one. All other gods were contacted, but not Xamias. Not the Creator, whose breath could make entire empires rise and fall. "It brings bad luck and madness onto people," Tsuk’ruk heard from the Elders ever since he was a child. Surely it was just a superstition. Tsuk’ruk closed his eyes, took up his drum, and began to chant.

***

Space was not empty for Xamias. It was vibrant; he was one with each ripple of energy and information passing through his astral body, aware of the most distant corners of the galaxy. Suddenly, his trance was interrupted. He felt something new: a minute presence.

***

Riding the rhythmic wave of his shaman drum, Tsuk’ruk’s spirit ascended out and beyond into the cosmos. He saw the Creator and Destroyer of Worlds. Xamias looked just like in the old legends: an eerie glow of purple scales and wings made of stars. Tsuk’ruk bowed to his power. 

But the dragon looked back at him. Tsuk’ruk’s heart froze as he realized this was no vision—this was real.

***

A worshiper. Xamias had not been contacted for hundreds of years. Now, the tiny presence floating in space before him elicited a feeling that was entirely new: curiosity. 

How do they worship him? To visit one of these minute worlds, to truly see it, to feel—even from a limited perspective of an individual—was too enticing to pass on.

***

Tsuk’ruk felt the dragon’s presence flowing into his mind, filling his body with power. He was no longer just a tribesman, not merely a shaman, not Tsuk’ruk anymore—he was so much more. He rose from his knees and strolled out of the temple tent. He walked onward through the steppe. The escaping refugees of his tribe passed by him, yet he walked toward the very place they were fleeing from. He walked until he saw the Moon banners waving in the sky, until the earth beneath his feet shook with the march of a thousand soldiers.

Then he raised his finger, and an entire army fell to their knees.

***

It was all just a minor distraction, nothing compared to the magnitude of cosmic ebb and flow. Xamias resumed his trance, taking a deep breath. Not a real breath, of course, but the tide of stardust passing through his purple scales. His chest rose and fell.

***

An empire fell, and a new one rose. Less than a year had passed when Tsuk’ruk the Mad united the tribes of the steppe and sat upon the Eastern throne. People feared him, for his eyes had turned black as the night sky.

They say he never sang a song again.