The Second Sound

For as long as anyone could remember, there had been a legend among the people, telling of a group of immortal warriors who dwelled in a forbidden temple, far from the great city.

One day in the life of men, a group of the city’s most powerful warriors decided they could no longer bear the shame of knowing that there existed warriors more fearless than they. They decided they would challenge these immortal warriors and become, themselves, the gods of their people.

So they journeyed to the place of the temple and gathered round its massive stone walls, but try as they might, they could find no entrance.

They pressed their ears to the walls, but no sound could be heard from within. They whooped and shouted and made their war cries, but only silence came to greet them.

Finally their leader, a great sage, realized and announced to the proud warriors that the only method of entry — the only way any one of them could gain access to the temple — would be to transform himself into one of the immortals.

And so the warriors relented and huddled outside the temple walls. They journeyed within themselves and encountered the powers who sleep in shadow. They mastered their fear and, in so doing, raised themselves to the level of the immortals.

At that moment they heard the first sound: the massive stone walls slid apart to permit their entry. Eager to encounter and defeat their foes, they rushed into the temple.

And though they searched everywhere within, no war cries came but their own; and the only warriors they found were each other. And that is when they heard the second sound . . .

. . . of the massive stone walls sliding back together around them.

And for as long as anyone can remember, there has been a legend among the people, telling of a group of immortal warriors who dwell in a forbidden temple, far from the great city.