Prompt: Continuing the Mythology History Video about Jacob

  “Welcome back!” The floating, animated brush known as Rush cheerfully called out as the video returned from advertisements. “Now that you’ve found the skip button, or used the time to get yourself a fresh bag of chips-- err… I mean, sat and very politely watched all of this video’s great sponsors, and possibly even thought of buying their wonderful products, we can get back to it!”

  Dug, the animated shovel, came into view and shook back and forth a little. “Nice save, Rush. But yes, welcome back! Hope you all had a nice two minute break, or however long you paused it for. Let’s get right into it again, shall we? Ahem, now where did we leave our Necromancer?”

  “Oooh, ooh, I know!” Rush bobbed up and down excitedly. “The people in his village betrayed him because of the bandits, but he still saved them. Then he left the Stonehenge village and never went back! But you said there's been stories about him all the way up to World War Two!”

  With a chuckle, Dug confirmed, “That’s right, people do like making up stories about good old Jacob and passing them around. Or maybe the truth is they just like making up stories about a Necromancer in general, and lots of those stories get attributed to Jacob Donn. Either way, I think we’re just gonna stick to the stories that are most often said to be him, and don’t have any other figure they can be reliably tied to. I’ll try to go in chronological order as much as possible.”

  With that, the animated shovel drove itself into the dirt, scooping away another layer. As soon as he did so, it revealed a new image in a deeper hole. This one was of a series of very steep and treacherous mountains, with jagged cliffs and dark storm clouds all around them. The one in the middle, surrounded by other dangerous peaks, was the tallest. Right near the top, just a few meters or so down from the summit, was a cave. Black smoke billowed out of the cave entrance.

  “Oh no, Dug!” Rush lamented. “Was Jacob so upset about what happened with the villagers that he went to live in a mountain cave like some sort of dragon? Or a hermit!? Or a hermit dragon!?”

  “Nah, buddy, the hermit dragon is one of the next videos,” Dug informed him, adding a soft chuckle just to be mysterious. As he spoke, the picture in the hole had grown to take up the full screen, leaving only their voices. In the process, the smoke coming out of the cave animated a little, puffing out and into the sky to join the dark clouds there. A small light appeared just a few feet within the mysterious cave, becoming some sort of campfire, as Dug continued the story.

  “So, the next bit we have with Jacob picks up some time between eighty and two hundred years later. I know, I know, but we can’t narrow it down more than that. Remember, we’re talking about stuff that was supposedly going on over four thousand years ago, and who knows how long it was after that before the story was written down in a way we can actually read today! It’s just a myth told over and over again and passed down. We don’t even know where this particular thing was supposed to take place, exactly, aside from ‘somewhere in some big mountains in Europe.’

  After letting that settle in for the viewer briefly, he went on. “The cave you see here isn’t where Jacob was living. It’s where a monster they called Muehr lived.” The way he pronounced it made the name rhyme with purr. “That’s M-U-E-H-R for those of you who don’t have the subtitles on. Muehr was, well, the best comparison I’d say I can make is that he was like an ogre. He was a very big, very mean, very hungry ogre. Also smart, a lot smarter than most ogres you hear about. Muehr would constantly raid the villages at the base of the mountain, and in the areas around that place, to grab children and eat them. That was his very favorite food, you see.”

  As he was saying that, narrating the words over the image, Rush came into view and quickly brushed back and forth across it. With each sweep of himself over the picture, more of it disappeared. It was replaced with a new image, this one of an ancient village. The people in the village, animated as little more than glorified stick figures, were in the midst of fleeing for their lives. There was a repeated series of very simple animations showing them rushing out of buildings and off the image. But two of the small, clearly child villagers were caught by an absolutely massive, monstrous figure that came in from the side. It was at least three times taller than any of the adult villagers, and much wider, with three long, jagged and twisted horns coming out of the right side of its head (it was bald on that side), each of which turned in a different, random direction. The left side of its head, meanwhile, appeared to have stringy hair that fell to its shoulders. Except very soon, the idea of it being hair was proven wrong, as the monster lifted up the two children and his ‘hair’ came to life, writhing and snapping at the kids like a nest of…

  “Snakes,” Dug confirmed for the viewers. “Like Medusa. The left side of Muehr’s head was covered in living snakes that could hypnotize anyone they bit. The snakes bite you, and then you’ll do anything Muehr says. Including letting yourself be eaten. Really nasty guy, that one.”

  As he said that, the snakes stretched out to bite several other passing adult stick figures who were trying to run away. They stopped, seemed to wobble back and forth as though dazed for a moment, then trotted off much more calmly. A second later, they came back, carrying small child figures, which they created a big pile of in front of Muehr. Soon, the snakebitten adults were just standing by, completely motionless, watching as the large ogre creature began to lift the first of the children he had grabbed up while tilting his head back. His mouth opened abnormally wide.

  And then the shovel was driven into that image again, scooping out another layer to reveal a new picture. This time, it was an image of a long, winding road leading through the mountains. A cloaked figure was walking along it, gradually approaching the mountain with the cave on top.

  “Ahem, sorry about that,” Dug apologized. “But with an algorithm that demonetizes you for saying a naughty word too quickly, I don’t think we even want to think about what they might do to a video that shows children being eaten by a monster. You’ll just have to imagine the rest of it from there.” An instant later, his shovel face appeared on screen. “Wait, no, don’t imagine that!”

  “Oooh, hey, is that him?” Rush hurriedly put in, waving excitedly back and forth in front of the new image. “Is that our hero coming to save the day and beat the evil baby-eating monster?”

  Dug gave a hearty laugh at that. “You know it, buddy. That’s Jacob Donn right there. See, we don’t know where he was before all that, but by this point, anywhere between just under one century to two centuries after we last saw him, Jacob was wandering down these mountain roads. Some stories say he was looking for someone, others say he was running away from someone. Some say both! It’s all pretty vague. But the point is, he made his way to the area that was being terrorized by Muehr. Now, apparently, these people weren’t exactly accustomed to getting visitors. They were in a pretty remote area, and this was over two thousand years ago! They didn’t exactly have much in the way of air travel, and the Airbnb service was just awful.”

  The two of them laughed together at that before the shovel continued. “Ahem, anyway, Jacob was walking along those roads. Why, and where he was going or coming from, we don't know. What we do know, or at least, what the story says, is that he stopped inside one of those villages to spend the night. He showed up out of the blue, and those people were just baffled. Seriously, they had less than no idea what to do with a stranger who just showed up in their town. The only people who had even been within a few hundred miles of the place in centuries were their own villagers, or people from the surrounding places around the mountain. Or, you know, the big, evil monster who kept raiding their home to eat their children and enslave them with his snake hair.”

  Rush gave a visible shudder, shaking back and forth as though trembling. “Man, Dug, that's still super creepy. I hope Jacob does something about this guy. And I hope these people don't treat him like crap when he does. But wait,” he realized, “if he’s still traveling almost two hundred years later, does that mean he never found a good place to settle down in? That’s kinda sad.”

  “It does sound kinda sad,” Dug agreed. “But hey, we don’t know what happened. Maybe he lived for a long time somewhere and just decided to move on. We can be optimistic. And, you know, it’s a story, so make up whatever you want about what happened in those two hundred years.”

  Bouncing up and down, Rush insisted, “Then I’m gonna say Jacob had a home and a family and he was happy for a century or so, but then his children and everyone moved on to their own lives, and that made him decide to move out and see more of the world. And now that he’s here in this place, he’s totally gonna save the villagers from that creepy ogre snake head guy, right?”

  “We’ll see, buddy,” Dug assured him, “we’ll see. As for Jacob himself, I guess it's safe to say he noticed something was off right away. The village just gave off really bad vibes. He paid for a place to stay for the night, but of course, they didn't know anything about any currency. So he traded some shiny gems. Even then, the people didn't exactly seem to grasp the concept of what he was asking for. He had to explain it very carefully, and make them understand that he was letting them keep the jewels in exchange for sleeping and eating in one of their homes.”

  On the screen, a quick bit of digging with the shovel revealed a new picture, where the cloaked figure was standing in the village surrounded by stick figures while holding out colorful, bright stones. Some of the villagers seemed confused and frightened, while others reached out for the stones, as if entranced by their great beauty. All of them were kneeling around the cloaked form.

  Rush appeared in front of the picture and quickly exclaimed, “Wait just a second! Hey, I know we're supposed to just go with this sort of thing and hold our suspension of disbelief or whatever. But do they ever explain how he could communicate with these people at all? I mean, the guy must be pretty far from where he grew up by now. So how can he understand them?”

  Dug proudly replied, “You know, that's a good question buddy. And the answer is Jacob's own power. He's a Necromancer, remember? So, everywhere he's been going, he raises ghosts who teach him the languages they know. He must not have had any ghosts from this village or he would've known exactly what was going on. But whatever they were speaking was close enough to languages from other places in the area that he could communicate.” There was a brief pause, as the shovel seemed to consider the ramifications of that before he added thoughtfully, “Or maybe he's just magic. Sometimes this sort of story just glosses over little details like that.”

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  By that point, Rush had brushed away that picture, so they could see a new one, of Jacob sitting on the roof of one of the houses right up near the base of the mountain. He had a long stick in one hand and a knife in the other, and seemed to be carving something into it while looking up.

  “Huh,” the little animated brush murmured while leaning in close to the image. “What’s he carving? And is he looking at the cave? Wait, does he know what’s going on here already!?”

  “He knew something, that’s for sure,” Dug acknowledged. “But not the whole story. Like I said, he picked up on the vibes pretty quickly. The villagers, even after accepting his stones and giving him a room to sleep in, were really cagey about things. See, they were afraid Muehr would know if they told this stranger anything. Some of them wanted to send him away immediately, and a few even wanted to hand him over to Muehr, if that’d make him happy.”

  “Bah! I knew it,” Rush lamented. “I knew there’d be some jerks that betrayed Jacob again.”

  “Easy there, pal,” Dug urged gently. “Like I said, there were a few who wanted to do that. They were scared, and remember, they’ve spent years and years, maybe even their whole lives being subjected to this guy. The story’s pretty vague on how long it was going on, but let’s assume it’s been enough that they don’t really see any escape, or any way to fight him. Some of them tried long ago, but by that point, he’s just the monster that rules over them. Those few thought they might be able to save some of their children by handing over this stranger. But those people were outnumbered by the ones who just wanted to urge him to leave, to get away from the mountain. They didn’t even know this man, but they still didn’t want him to be killed by Muehr.”

  Meanwhile, the image had shifted slightly, showing a closer view of the cloaked figure carving that stick. Gradually, it became clear that what he was carving was a snake head. All while a series of softly glowing stick figures appeared around him on the roof. Each of them was pointing up toward the top of the mountain in the distance. Toward the cave where Muehr lived.

  Rush immediately realized, “Oh, oh! It’s the ghosts, isn’t it? It’s the ghosts of people from that village! Jacob was suspicious, and he wasn’t getting any answers from the people who were still alive, so he found ghosts and got them to tell him what was going on! Now he knows the truth!”

  The shovel appeared on screen, beaming cheerfully. “Solid deduction there, Rushy. Yeah, Jacob asked the ghosts what was going on. It-- well some versions of the story say he did it that first night, others say it took a few days of growing more suspicious as the villagers kept urging him to leave. But I think we should assume good old Jacob didn’t need that much prodding to realize there was some weird stuff going on there. Weird enough to make him go looking for some dead people who could answer his questions. They did, so he knew about the monster in the cave.”

  “So what’s he carving the wooden snake thing for, Dug?” Rush eagerly asked, watching closely as the actual carving itself became a clear snake form in Jacob’s hands. “It’s gotta have something to do with the snake hair, but what? Is he gonna use it to break the mind control that jerk puts on people when the snakes bite them? Oooh, ooh, is it a magic snake stick, Dug!?”

  “Definitely a magic snake stick,” Dug confirmed. “But what sort of magic snake stick? We’ll find out in a minute. See, Jacob finished making his stick, then he told the villagers that he knew what was going on. Now they were really scared. They tried to insist he flee the mountain as fast as possible. But Jacob told them to go in their homes and stay there. He told them to go inside and not to come out until he told them to, no matter what they heard. When they were in the homes, he used magic to keep them there, so no one could come out, and no one could go in.”

  “Oh, I get it, he was making sure Muehr couldn’t snake-bite them and turn them into human shields!” Rush immediately realized. “And they went along with it, being locked in their homes?”

  “They were used to doing what they were told by that point,” Dug noted. “After years and years of being beaten down and broken by that big ogre jerk, the villagers weren’t exactly in the right mindset to tell anyone no. But this isn’t just about protecting them. Jacob knew he had to do more than that. He had to give them back what Muehr took. He had to give their souls back.” A brief pause followed, before he amended, “Not literal souls, we’re talking metaphorically here.”

  With that, the shovel slid across the picture, scooping out a new pile of dirt along with it. Beneath that one, in a hole that was getting rather deep indeed by that point, was an image of the village taken from above. Jacob stood directly in the center, by the fire pit, while all the houses around him seemed to be covered by glowing bubbles. The man himself, face still shielded by the hood, was staring almost directly up at the viewer. It looked as though the image had been taken from the point of view of someone standing high on the mountain while looking straight down at him.

  “Oh no!” Rush realized, “that’s Muehr, isn’t it? We’re seeing through Muehr’s eyes, he’s gonna jump down there and attack Jacob! Where’s Jacob’s ghosts and zombies and skeletons? He’s gotta have a big army to fight back, you said Muehr was super duper ultra strong, didn’t you?”

  “I sure did, and he was,” Dug confirmed with a quick bob up and down. “But don’t worry, Jacob wasn’t just a top of the line and very cool Necromancer, he was also very smart. And he was ready for that jerk to try to ambush him like that. After all, he finished carving his snake stick.”

  With that mysterious note, the shovel pushed himself into the image, scooping away another bit of dirt to reveal the next picture down. This one showed a point of view from just behind Jacob and over his shoulder, revealing Muehr, in full giant ogre form with the whole nest of snakes stretching out from one side of his head, as he jumped right down toward the Necromancer.

  The image animated, showing Muehr driving at the man with a roar. And then… he went right through him. The supposed form of ‘Jacob’ fell apart like smoke, revealing Muehr standing there with something lodged in his side. Something that had been propped up inside of ‘Jacob’ that whole time, waiting for the ogre to dive into. It was the snake stick, the opposite end of which had been sharpened to a point, while the snake part at the other end had glowing eyes. Magic runes were drawn all the way down the shaft/body of the snake, and they were glowing as well.

  With a gasp, Rush blurted, “It was an illusion!? Jacob suckered the guy into attacking a hologram!?”

  Dug chuckled a bit. “You know, I’m not sure if hologram would be the technical word, but yes, basically. It was an illusion. He tricked Muehr into diving right into the magic snake stick. And once he did, it was all over for Muehr. Watch.”

  It was clear that more effort and skill had gone into the next part of the animation, given how important it was. The image of Muehr jerked upright with the snake stick embedded in him, arms held out to his sides and shaking violently. His entire body was shaking, actually. His mouth was open, and it was obvious that he was roaring in fury. Or possibly agony. The snakes coming out of his head were stiff and outstretched to their full extension. Then one of the snakes literally came out of his head. It fell free, landing on the ground. A second followed, then a third. Soon, each of the several dozen snakes had fallen to the ground.

  That was when the real surprising change happened. Even as Muehr reached down, grabbed the snake stick, and ripped it out of himself, the actual snakes on the ground transformed. They grew and shifted, until there were almost forty full-sized human children lying there.

  “W-wait, wait! Are those the-- wait, kids!?” Rush stammered in surprise.

  “Ding ding,” Dug cheerfully replied. “See, Jacob traveled a lot before this, and he knew so many things. You know what they say about knowledge being power and all that. So he figured out that the thing Muehr was actually didn’t digest the kids he ate. He absorbed them and turned them into the snakes on his head. Not only did he know that, he also knew how to get them out again. But it had to be something that Muehr did to himself. Muehr had to stab himself with the enchanted magic stick, you see? So, Jacob had to trick him into doing that. He set up the illusion of himself, hid the stick inside it, and let Muehr jump at ‘him.’ Poof, the kids were freed.”

  Rush celebrated at first, spinning around above the image. Then he stopped. “Ohhh you said Jacob realized he had to give the villagers their souls back. The kids! He gave them back the kids they lost!”

  Dug gave an easy chuckle. “Exactly right, pal. And that’s why Jacob told the people to stay in their houses instead of going somewhere far away from that place before this. Because their homes were protected by the spells he put up. So, as soon as the kids were freed, they were all magically transported safely into those homes. Which left Jacob on the outside with only Muehr to worry about. A Muehr who didn’t have his snake boosts anymore. Because every child he absorbed made him stronger. That’s why he was so powerful, cuz he absorbed so many kids. Now that they weren’t in him anymore, he wasn’t anywhere near as strong. I mean, he was still pretty dangerous, but Jacob could handle him. And he did. Jacob took that guy out. It’s uhh… well, see, some of the stories say he fought him, some say he used one magic spell and killed him that way, there’s one that says he raised his hand to the heavens and a beam of light shot down to kill Muehr. There’s lots of different versions. Whatever he did, Muehr died and the kids were saved.”

  “Um,” Rush worried, “is this the part where the villagers do something bad or very ungrateful, so Jacob has to leave again?”

  “Aww, still worried about that?” Dug gave the image a quick scoop, going down to the next layer. This new picture showed all the villagers, along with the newly rescued children, gathered around Jacob. The dead body of Muehr lay in the corner. Then the shovel dug again, for another picture. This showed the body of Muehr being burned. Another bit of digging for another picture. Several tables were laid out in the middle of the village, laden down with food while the villagers and Jacob celebrated. Another dig, another picture, and they were building a new house. Another dig, another picture, and Jacob was standing inside the open doorway of the new house.

  Dug went faster then, showing picture after picture as the hole got deeper. The village had snow, then bright sun, then falling leaves, snow again, and so on, over and over again. There were more houses, more villagers, and all the while, Jacob still stood there in the open doorway.

  Finally, the animated shovel stopped. “According to the stories, Jacob stayed in that mountain village for thirty years. He stayed until all the children he had saved were grown. And in all that time, not one of their people died by unnatural means. He protected them from all danger. But then Jacob realized he had to leave. He had to move on. The people had grown too dependent on him. They loved him, and he loved them. But the longer he stayed, the less they were able to do for themselves. Which would mean, if he ever had to leave for any other reason, or if anything happened to him, they would be helpless.

  “But, of course, he didn’t leave them immediately. Jacob spent one more year in the village, training and teaching them to care for themselves, to fight, to protect their homes. Only then did he say his goodbyes. He left that village and moved on.

  “And that bit of our video, radical Rush, is the story of how Jacob Donn found his second home, lived for decades, and then moved on, by his own choice.”

  Joke Tags: Damn It? Dug? Do You Have Any Idea How Loudly People Are Gonna Start Asking About Jacob Having More Children Now?