The Gods Need A Better Storyteller
After dying in a fire, a librarian finds himself before Geshich, the god of stories. Desperate for another chance at life, and avoid the dread of death, he pleads for a second chance. Geshich agrees, on one condition: this time, his life must be worth telling.
Reborn as Caleb Lightbane, he finds himself in a medieval world turned on its head, where women are superhuman warriors and men wield magic. Determined to avoid a dull and uninteresting life, Caleb searches for a narrative worthy of divine approval, unaware that his desire for a good story may get him into more trouble than its worth.
When he accidentally kills several figures he believes to be bandits in the woods, Caleb stumbles upon a horrifying discovery: a trunk containing a strange and alien substance and the dismembered bodies parts of young girls. Wracked with guilt and curiosity, he spends months studying healing magic, eventually succeeding in restoring them to life.
But when the girls awaken, Caleb panics and invents a lie. He tells them they were sacrificed by an evil cult devoted to a god of Entropy, casting himself as a chosen savior: the Prophet of Light.
Trapped by his own fabrication, Caleb’s situation worsens when he carelessly creates a clone of himself, one who eagerly volunteers to play the role of the Evil Prophet.
From opposite sides of a sometimes carefully constructed myth and sometimes random bullshit they came up with, Caleb and his clone begin to shape their followers into warriors and zealots, forged by faith, lies and gas-lighting.
To sustain the illusion, the two prophets engage in deliberate theatrics: staged confrontations, fake prophecies, and calculated displays of mercy and cruelty, all designed to be seen and remembered.
And their antics may have caught the attention of more than just Geshich.
(2-3 Chapters a week. Usually on Tuesdays and Thursday, sometimes Saturday. But there will be a hiatus between volumes.)
