He had seen them before while on the hunt, but it felt again as if it were for the first time.

Who had they been—the four men these massive granite faces represented and which had been carved into the hillside of his ancestral homeland? Were they true, the stories the elders passed down from one generation to the next? Had they been great leaders of some powerful, ancient civilization? Overlords of a world now mostly forgotten?

The questions had no answers. And the eroding and crumbling faces, overgrown now with dying vines and looming high above him, weren’t talking.

He didn’t know why, but being in their presence unnerved him. So, he reminded himself of what his father, a great tribal leader, had told him. That he was now a warrior of the people and as such he could not let himself fear something which could not threaten him. That what he saw was nothing more than rocks, the earth upon which they stood.

Still, they rattled his spirit, and he shifted his shield as if to ward off a threatening advance.