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Assignment 2:
(Disclaimer: this story is completely fictional and
should in no way be attributed to any sort of actual
Inuit legend)
Long ago, before the peoples of the great
Asian continent had ever crossed the land-bridge over
the Pacific's waters to reach what is now called Alaska,
a great war was waged between the most powerful of the
gods.
Alignak, the god of the weather, the
water and the earthquakes, decided that he should have
control over not just the rain and the snow, but also
over all of the oceans. Idliragijenget controlled the
oceans at that time, and when he refused to relinquish
his hard-earned power to Alignak, the latter grew angry
and decided to wrest command over the great waters away
from his fellow god.
The other gods of the land were greatly
angered by Alignak's actions, for no other was more
jealous than he, and they feared that, given the
opportunity, Alignak would attempt to defeat all of them
in battle, seizing the land bit by bit. Thus Aipaloovik,
the god of death and destruction, and Ignirtog, the god
of truth and light, banded together with Idliragijenget,
hoping to expel Alignak to the depths of the underworld.
There he would live forever under the careful watch of
the underworld gods Pana and Tornarsuk.
Alignak approached the place where the
ocean met the land to do battle with Idliragijenget,
bending the cyclone winds into armor and molding the
lightning into his sword. The earth trembled before him.
Idliragijenget called upon the waters beneath him,
trapping Alignak inside of the maelstrom that was his
own creation. As Idliragijenget held the treacherous
Alignak at bay, Aipaloovik and Ignirtog leapt from
concealment, the latter calling upon the light from
above to blind Alignak and the former opening up the
ground directly beneath the earthquake god, slowly
pulling him into the underworld.
Alignak soon recognized that he was
outnumbered, overpowered and in grave danger. He
summoned one last burst of power from within, driving
the lightning in his grasp into the watery shell around
him, sending steam in all directions. Alignak began to
rise from the grave his opponents had placed him in,
however the other three gods thought too quickly for him
to meet with more than momentary success. Released from
Idliragijenget's trap, Alignak remained too powerful to
be pushed into the underworld through brute strength.
Seeing this, Ignirtog directed one last sunbeam at the
upstart god, causing him to take a step back. As he
tumbled into the fissure, Aipaloovik took advantage of
the moment of weakness to call upon his terrible powers
of destruction, wrenching an expanse of land from that
around him. As the Pacific's waters rushed into the area
that Aipaloovik had emptied, he released the behemoth
rock over Alignak's head, trapping the god beneath a
mountainous grave.
The three gods rejoiced in their victory,
dubbing the mountain encasing their opponent
"Augustine." Alignak lies underneath the mountain even
today, his anger causing the earth around him to tremble
and his control over the lightning and the air sending
ash and gases flying from the volcano's summit,
fragments of lightning-scorched rock rising on the winds
of Alignak's fury, as he did most recently in the
eruptions of early 2006.
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