“Do not seek the Assemblage of Ur.”

The brokers frown turned into a crooked smile; yellow teeth danced on a canvas of rotten meat. He lit his pipe and smoke filled the room. His single eye dangled in the darkness, a moon full of loathing and contempt.

The seeker was all too familiar with what the broker just said. From the white cliffs of England to the darkest heart of Africa, broken men taunted him with those words.

“Do not seek the Assemblage of Ur.” The seeker replied with mockery and spit oozing from his mouth. “I want answers. Name your price.”

The broker leaned back in his chair, and for a moment only the creaking of wood could be heard in the barely lit backroom of the pub. Then silence. The seeker dug his nails into the armrest of his chair, several of them broke. He was a starving wolf in a cage, with prey dangling right in front of him, always just out of reach.

The broker’s face softened into a sorrowful grimace. “There is no stopping you, is there?” The old man’s voice was hollow and cold.

The seeker arched forward; he was a drawn bow. Every muscle and sinew in his body was so tensed up, it screamed for him to stop. His tattered body was begging him for mercy.

“Name. Your. Price.” The seeker snarled through his dried out, blistered lips.

“Your name. That is my price.”

His name?

The question hit the seeker like a hammer. He knew he should have felt relief, but his heart was full of cold dread. It crept from his guts to his chest, from his jaw to his fingers, freezing all in its path.

What was his name?

He tried to remember, his broken mind strained so far, it may snap at any moment. He tried and tried, but only three words came to him: Assemblage of Ur. Every inch of his brain was carved with those words.

There was nothing left of him but fragments, floating in a sea of the Assemblage of Ur. England. Algeria. A few faces he might have once recognized. Cutting off a blackened toe. A lion dashing across an empty steppe.

“Assemblage of Ur.” The seeker blurted out, startling himself, as if his mouth was not his own. It was not what he said that scared him so, but that he did not feel the need to correct himself. It felt right.

“Ah. That’s a good name.” The broker whispered through thick smoke, as if talking to himself.

This was not the time for doubt. The seeker paid the price, and he would finally have some answers. He leaned forward, his whole body a single, pulsating cramp.

“Where is the Assemblage of Ur? What is it?” The seeker hissed, thick spit dripping down his chin like tar from a roof.

Every further moment without answers was a lifetime of torment. The Assemblage of Ur had burrowed itself into the deepest part of his mind. It was like a splinter that you could touch and wiggle around, but whenever you tried to pull it out, it would slip out of your fingers.

Then finally, the broker spoke and laughed.

“It’s right here. It’s in the pub. Inside of you. You are the Assemblage of Ur.” The broker’s empty laughter was only broken by sporadic coughing.

Anger is like a raging river. Even the wildest men only ever dared to take tiny sips from it, afraid they might slip and fall, never to emerge again. But at this moment, the seeker had drunk the river dry.

A strange calmness befell him, as he pummeled the broker. There was sweet relief in the wet slapping sound of his boot against the old man’s naked skull.

He swore that this would be the fate of all that denied him the sacred knowledge of the Assemblage of Ur. All that made him a fool. All that would dangle its secrets in front of him, like a carrot to a mule.

A thought crept across his spine and up into the back of his head. The more he stomped and maimed, the more the broker’s words made sense. A terrifying sense of clarity came over him.

Yes. This was the Assemblage of Ur.

The Assemblage had no walls. It had no words or songs. It had no members or creed. There was only infinite blackness and something terrible watching him.

Answers.

The voice came from inside his mind. For a moment, he thought its sheer power would splinter his bones and boil his innards. And then he was finally given the answers he so desperately needed. The answers he wept and prayed for every night.

He saw torches dancing in a pitch-black cave, illuminating the first men as they drew their stories on its walls. Their colors ran out. They butchered each other and had colors again. Their craft devoured them, until the last of the torches died. The blood revealed what was, it showed what is, and it hinted at what only God should know. Their scribbles had become true art, complete and fulfilled, untouchable in its divine purity. But with their art came the curse of knowledge.

The story repeated itself forever. The actors changed. The places changed. A house, a castle, a swamp, a mountain, a pub. Only the unquenchable thirst for knowledge and the art itself remained.

A swarm of images came over the seeker, like Locust on a field. A woman drowned her children in blood. Men tore out their own eyes to finally see for the first time in their lives. A king of maggots. Strings of black shot into a white sky.

He saw himself a thousand times, doomed to repeat this dance forever. He was a man, a child, a girl. He danced around the first fire and flew on wings of steel.

Empires rose and fell. Sands covered forests, and ice made way for ancient lands. The sun died for a century, and men danced on their own graves, revealing the final masterpiece of the Assemblage of Ur.

The Earth itself screamed out in ecstatic terror as it was turned into a canvas. Then there was silence, perfect and complete.

--

Claire was a singer with a bright future ahead of her. But ever since she overheard the old doomsayer on the streets of foggy London, she just couldn’t focus on her craft.

A question was stuck in her head. It was nothing too serious, more like a small itch in the back of her mind.

She found the old man at a busy corner, screaming of gods and arts. As she approached him through a sea of people, she wondered how to best ask her silly question.

Before she could even part her lips, the doomsayer screamed something at her. Something, that made her genuinely angry for the first time in her life.

“Do not seek the Assemblage of Ur.”