The Legend of Efericus

The Legend of Efericus

This tale is of a prophecy, one recovered during an archeological dig my parents worked on in the southern American jungle a few years ago. The many known legends of tribal civilizations occupying the jungles of the south have been found to be true...but there are many that remain only as stories told around a campfire.

The lost secret of how the prolific, technologically and culturally advanced Mayan civilization was eradicated from Earth was uncovered during the dig in Guatemala. For some reason, this is still a secret, and I think it's because the bigwigs don't want people to panic. Or maybe they're working on a way to monetize the find. I think we have a right to know, so here it is.

In the city of Tikal, there are many descendants of the Mayans. They speak of a tribe more intrinsically intertwined with the jungle than any other group of humans. A rare branch of humans that grew alongside the animals and plants more than one can fathom. So far-bred from modern humans that their DNA is noticeably different -- though these were generally considered myths, meant to scare village children away from exploring too far into the jungle -- until the Cave of Prophecies was found.

They say the closest ancestors we share with the Jungle Folk are those of the ancient Mayan civilization. The legend of Efericus is a frightful one, wherein the people lived gloriously, yet they faced a threat so great, that panic and vanity claimed their souls.

The children of the Jungle grew powerful, according to the hieroglyphics, and it seems every generation brought new forms of superior capabilities. The stone carvings and paintings depicted villagers leaping from tree to tree, singing to flying creatures, and riding the backs of bears and giant reptiles. There seems to be peace, despite these wild behaviors, until the cave deepens. The light begins to escape the human eye, yet the drawings grow more detailed and extravagant.

The ancients began to write in a language of their own, and formed phrases, or groups of words, in the form of symbols, with apparent meaning. These words are paired with paintings, and the discovery of what happened to the Mayans revealed itself. The language was translated by researchers, as best as possible, and here is the long-lost truth:

It shows a villager, dreaming. She sees a round white face... the eyes appear to belong to a human... yet there was no nose or lips. And when the creature blinked, the sheer oddity and suddenness of the movement would shock the dreamer back into consciousness. We now know this prophecy haunted the dreams of a woman named Laya, the village seer. She is the only villager that makes an appearance right from the opening of the cave, all the way to the dark depths, thousands of meters in. It seems she never aged, the way she is painted, and these primitive records show hundreds, if not thousands of years of history.

Needless to say, Laya is a baffling figure. In the more recent depictions, she warns of a plague, one so great it would incite panic for even the bears that protected the village borders. Despite all the past records depicting Laya as a valued source of almost omniscient wisdom (widely respected and at times she even appears to be worshiped), it seems she was set to be sacrificed to the Jungle, in hopes that the prophecy would not come true.

This is where the records really start to uncannily change, as if those responsible for creating these records was altered in an instant, without transition. The new paintings depict a grand beast, full of flutter, or cheer, and wit. The monstrous drawing from the past is replaced with an elegant one, with eyes more at ease.

The creature is called Efericus. He is beautiful and silent. The land is full of peace, and the jungle flourishes, but there are no more figures of humans in the paintings. As if they disappeared, without a trace. Now this is just the beginning of the truth. This is what was found in the Cave of Prophecies, as it's so endearingly named by researchers. The full legend of Efericus is a much more incredulous tale.

This part is what I learned on my own. See, my parents went on this work trip, but when your parents are both researchers, you end up following them around, country to country, site to site. I came to know some locals, and went on a bit of an excursion myself, with my friend Xavier and his younger sister Luna. We snuck into the national park where my parents were doing their research. It wasn’t very hard, we just hopped a fence down the road from the entrance. We straggled our way through the brush; Xavier had a machete, so he sliced somewhat of a path. We found a main path fairly quickly because Xavier and Luna had grown up in the neighborhood and they knew the park very well.

We stayed pretty far from the designated dig area -- there are huge fines, and even jail time possible for trespassing there, so we spent our time running around the outskirts. We found wild carambola, often called starfruit because of its shape, and one they called ‘haas’, which I know to be called an avocado in Canada. Xavier joked of hunting down a deer we came across, to which Luna cringed. I was starting to get quite hungry, and I may have salivated at the thought of deer stew, but I knew there would be a delicious meal waiting back at the hotel my parents were residing in during their study.

Instead, Luna found a nest of turtle eggs, which we cooked over a small fire. I used strips of shaved bark from a dead tree, along with some branches and twigs. I carry all-weather matches and a pocket-knife everywhere I go, as my father taught me. We were in the midst of a dry season, so fires are the least and worst of the jungle’s problems. We set ourselves up near the big river, allowing us to put the fire out with ease. This is where I learned of the Jungle Folk and the stories of the River of Eternity.

While we waited for our eggs to simmer, Xavier shared tales of the old world. Xavier and Luna come from a long line of Mayan blood relatives, and the stories passed down are inconceivable for many born of our modern tech-focused world. He said the Mayans emigrated from the deep jungle, leaving many loved ones behind, in search of a life they saw as novel and more advanced. They cleared a massive area of plantation and used dried produce methods to over-harvest the natural food in their vicinity.

The Jungle Folk retreated further into the dark depths of the jungle, while the Mayans moved into the limelight, to boom economically, well into the level of overgrowth. Their overt success drew attention to their location, and the humans that lived in the modern cities nearby noticed the new village, full of food and healthy people.

The difference is that the Mayans saw their unique endeavors to be prominent, and prudent, while the Jungle Folk hid, and the Outsiders peered in ever so sneakily.

Just before the Outsiders planned to invade the jungle, the predatory birds of the jungle raided the Mayan lands. The Outsiders wanted to collect blood samples, or even better, a few Mayans to do scientific studies on. The birds of prey were simply more organized, more devilish in their acumen when it came to hunting or cornering prey, and their strategy left Outsiders feeling fearful.

First, the flocks cast a dark shadow; with their silent approach and calm execution they covered the sun’s rays within moments. Not a single villager saw it coming, until they couldn’t see at all. Fumbling and stumbling, the villagers scrambled to find cover, thinking a great storm is on the rise. It wasn’t a storm of weather, unfortunately for them…It was a storm only nature can produce. Only evolutionary intelligence and growth can bring about this revolutionary change in the atmosphere.

The owls of the jungle had grown very wise, overseeing the humans, among other creatures of the woods, and their predatory line of sight allowed them to attack enemies with ferocity, from heights unseeable, with speeds imperceivably.

When they attacked the Mayans, it was in unison, with no forewarning. They began pecking out their eyes, knocking weapons out of their hands, grasping torches and dropping them, still aflame, onto the huts and resource piles. The Mayans panicked, their vanity estranged, and they failed to function as a whole to survive.

In one fell swoop, the Mayans were massacred, some taken prisoner by Outsiders as they tried to flee out of the jungle, others disappearing into the green canvas of the jungle, never to be seen or heard from ever again. Most Outsiders fled, fearing the wrath of Efericus and his flocks. We now come back, thousands of cowardly years later, to uncover the stones and drops of DNA from the Mayan remnants.

A civilization was established, it flourished, and yet it was erased by the jealous, and the zealous. The Mayan civilization itself bordered the philosophical limits of what is greedy, and what is necessary for comfort. The destruction of the natural habitats did not reap immediate consequence, but nature came back full force upon the Mayans.

The Jungle Folk fear Efericus to this day, and the wrath of nature even more so -- for Efericus and his flock reigned destruction upon a beautifully progressive paradise in one, single, night. This destruction was so perfectly completed that no one really knows, to this day, what truly happened to the Mayan civilization, or who the mysterious ‘Laya the Seer’ was…Or is.