Orlandic Imperial Edition [Rev. XIV]

// As translated from Vala’tekka ( \ val-ah-tay-kah.\ orig. lang. Pedin’glar {Elvish::Xetan derivative} common xlate. “god book”)

Elys: Verses of Conception

v.i~Å::The Gifting. And we, the Vala’eichil, acolytes of the prime goddess Elys, clung to the sheer of the ivory mountain, Illum Tor. The fork-tongued serpent, Antaron slithered below, waiting for, I, Efridel, and my people to renounce our faith and embrace the coils of darkness below. A precious few of the five and twenty yet remained.

Antaron’s seething whispers of trickery seeped into the ears of Teodorah and Rechs, the last of Elys’s chosen to conquer the perilous clime. I called out to them to resist the temptation; to make known that the embrace of Elys would deliver us from the fangs of The Shaedwinder. Yet they succumbed.

Their hands peeled away. Their faces broke with sorrow. Their forms collapsed into the onyx maelstrom below.

It was I alone, me, Efridel. I broke my gaze from the black death below and hefted myself up, up, up the cliff face to stand before the altar of the Great Mother - before the Monolith that binds the world. The Shaedwinder, Antaron, shrieked in pain and withered into a putrid, writhing pool of black muck as I neared the plateau. And as I broke the threshold of the aethereal sanctum, the earth below swallowed whole, the serpent.

Before me, her likeness in a slab of ivory stone. Pious. Matronly. Beautiful. I hurriedly approached and bent the knee, “It is I, Efridel, oh Great Mother. I beseech you. Oh, what will is it, that on this glorious day you would bring me to your bosom against all odds.”

Her white eyes opened onto my face. Her hands clasped mine in gentleness. Her resounding call filled my soul with peace.

It is you, my dear champion. It is you who shall leave The Cradle and wander the lands carved by titans. You are to be my lore keeper. You will carry my verse to the first of the worldkin, so that they may know the mythos of their genesis. It is you that will ensure my visage is among the failings of my progeny. For the Twins have set asunder the bonds of twilight and the Pyllars of Eight cast no shadow. Thus the titans, my Exemplars, my great grandchildren, have already been destined to failure.

Hence, Her verse poured into my being. So that I may sow it in the worldkin of Elysera as prophet among the first people.

v.i~I::The Seeding. [+-] The Great Mother called forth to her champion and professed;

I am the progenitor of The Fathoms, the great vacuum that drifts among the astrum. I am the womb that bore the seeds of the Lambent and the Umbra. I was once a substantial expanse, devoid of all but potential. So am I named, Elys, the Matriarch of Existence, Great Mother and namesake of material realms - Elysera.

From my incarnation, I sowed the seed of creation. A single golden seed. A seed that would fill The Fathoms with purpose. Yet that seed was a pebble dropped into a lake, a ripple that sparked a tidal wave, bastardizing the equilibrium of potential.

Thus the void sought balance. The Fathoms revolted against this anomaly. It struck at the seed, reflecting the seed’s disturbance back on itself until the force was too great to bear.

Yet expectation had not given way to chance. It had not considered the calculation of potential in its reaction. The seed split rather than withered, each piece carrying its own correction. One, a brilliant, golden dawn and the other, a lackluster gloaming dusk.

So it came into existence, the light and the dark. My twins that together made twilight. Hence they were named Zoka, The Lambent and Zyla, The Umbra.

=>>

{ resp. } From the Fathoms, born light and dark. For eternity we seek pilgrimage to the Monolith; yea, must we return to the womb.

v.i~II:: Fuge. [+-] So sings the Great Mother;

From my womb did The Twins grow, stretching to the corners of The Fathoms. They danced and sang in harmony, blending the dusk and dawn into sonorous shades of chroma.

But as they grew, so did their radiance. Day tamped out night, night blanketed day. And both consumed The Fathoms with The Drifts - realms of the Lambent and Umbra. Eventually, though, It came to be that brother and sister could not coexist.

They thrashed at one another, relentlessly, as if gasping for the last drops of potential. Onerous and discontented with the gift of existence, they sought to subdue the other. From their spattered, roiling blood formed the Pyllars of Eight, heralds that would seek to reason their creators to a new purpose. Progeny that would wield the light and the dark as tools for creation rather than destruction.

From Zoka, four Pyllars which were bestowed with name and dominion over life, light, nature and knowledge: Lylith, the Torchbearer / Hundar, The Physicker / Oephina, The Heartwood & Yldon, The Bookbinder.

From Zyla, four Pyllars which were bestowed with name and dominion over war, death, tempest and trickery: Gronkus, The Warmonger / Groend, The Torrent / Eustreya, The Lifeless & Tunk, The Defiant.

As such, the Pyllars of Eight wove the chromas of twilight into a great realm known as The Cradle, where true potential would succumb to existence or nonexistence. My grandchildren became the architects of ideals, spinning light and dark together on a loom, a skein to guide evolution.

But in doing so, they had created something new. Something beyond The Lambent and The Umbra. It’s name was forever stitched into the fabric of the Drifts: Bedlam & Tranquility.

=>>

{ resp. } From the Drifts, bred bedlam and tranquility. For eternity we seek pilgrimage to the Monolith; yea, must we return to the The Cradle.

v.i~III::Genesis. [+-] And I embrace the cant of the Great Mother;

Bedlam and Tranquility lay in a hovel at the heart of the Cradle, a space known only as the Aether. And the Pyllars of Eight looked upon it with dismay. Their domains had definition without purpose, meaning without method. They knew not how to catalyze and evolve the remnant potential.

Instead, my dear Pyllars went to cocoon, a provocative dance of evolution to make their potential realized. Through trial of their metamorphosis, new beings molted from their shells; shrifts of the Pyllars they grew from.

In all, fourteen Exemplars came forth; my great grand children, titans who claimed rulership of the tenants from within in the Pyllars’ dominions. Cast their names among your reverence.

Of Light: Roh, The Soldier / Dren, The Crusader / Orin, The Composer & Tovan, The Ambassador

Of Life: Iscka, The Healer / Pestle, The Alchemist / Ackle, The Peacekeeper & Delia, The Matchmaker

Of Nature: Ankus, The Field Hand / Ordia, The Huntress / Chorun, The Timekeeper & Krotus, The Shepherd

Of Knowledge: Quillis, The Scribe / Maygus, The Mage / Vorlus, The Tinkerer & Aythel, The Emissary

Of Tempest: Tremys, the Quake / Pyria, the Volcano / Kalysa, the Maelstrom & Tyrius, the Whirlwind

Of Death: Crag, the Executioner / Oleg, the Casket / Niela, the Pallbearer & Belarus, the Lich

Of Trickery: Clepsis, the Thief / Jinx, the Trickster / Shogus, the Madman & Selissa, the Deceiver

Of War: Tonken, the Marauder / Endrissa, the Sellsword / Anoc, the Conqueror & Thax, the Tyrant

Thus in worship, the worldkin shall remember that they are the true creators of the material realms of Elysera.

For while their progenitors slept, the Exemplars, radix of the worldkin, beheld the Bedlam and Tranquility and with the sharpest edges of their ideals, whittled the turbid mass into mountains and marshes, flora and fauna, hillsides and hollows. They carved the lines between sky and earth, between night and day, between life and death. They lay a world molded after The Cradle and gave it my name.

And they tore from their own visage a spark of life, from which they folded and forged the worldkin, the first people of Elysera. In them, the Exemplars saw the taint of Bedlam and the gift of Tranquility. Yet, over a span of suns and moons, those worldkin had evolved into something far greater than the Exemplars had ever envisioned: creatures of free will.

When they gave thanks to the Exemplars and to the Pyllars and to me, the Great Mother, the monolith that binds the world, the Exemplars retreated to the Silver Horizon. They look on from that thin line between earth and sky shimmering in the twilight. They stand guard over their creations and gently guide them to equilibrium.

=>>

{ resp. } From the Aether, forged and folded free will. For eternity we seek pilgrimage to the Monolith; yea must we return to the Silver Horizon.

The painted horse

trotting

Broken by black sunrise

Wildfire rises

Devours thistle and thorn

Crawl into the darkest holes

Escape scorched earth

Blistering blaze

The painted horse

galloping

Bit and bridle binding its mouth

Raging inferno smoking it out

Hopeless smoke death

Moving, consuming

Killing at will

Giving chase to the painted horse

The painted horse

sprinting

Aimless - into the abyss

Logic crippled

Eyes wide, scared and weary

Thrashing about gasping for air

Cornered, no way out

The red crushes down

The painted horse

listless

Taken by the swarm

No guide at the reigns

Falling spittles of wonder

Dissolving in a pool of ejaculated watercolor

Brain bangs smash mouth waves of sparks

Like an old typewriter clacking and racking

Tearing at the next line

A dose of intellectual smack

Epiphanies on a platter for ingestion

Decaying under a horde of maggots

While idle mouths masticate on air

Tearing at the next breath

A bottle full of tamed inhibitions

Cork popped and bleeding from the neck

Stained wet hands trying to stem the flow

Like eating soup with a dinner fork

Tearing at the impossibility

Air full of ripe iridescent smoke

Expelled from the heft of deflated lungs

Bone dry by varying degrees of sensibility

While starving hearts pump thoughtlessness

Tearing at the next beat

A cool reticence that lives in the white noise of vintage UHF. Technicolor late-nights ended with a bleary-eyed patriotic timber of colored stripes waving good night. That red, white and blue, turned to color bars then dissolved into a Rorschach of white noise. Volume, cranked all the way down.

A sliver of space at the crest of an exhale. When the labor of your diaphragm ceases to heave. A momentary calm that blots out the entendre of motion. Mouth gaped, nostrils flared in seizure. At the edge of autonomic response. Preparing to suck wind once again.

A single frame of bewilderment as a pair baby blues behold something yet unbeheld. Pupils expanding and contracting - dissecting a kaleidoscope of light. A blank canvas set to capture the wondrous or define the ordinary. Reveling in that momentary blur, that minor lack of focus imbibing in emptiness.

An abyss, a sprawling gulf of nothing, unmolested, somewhere between sleep and wake. Between life and death. Between the conscious and unconscious. A mind drowned in the deep, ears filled with liquid plugs, eyes closed, volume down, white noise , pause between breaths, world out of focus.

An echo chamber in a vacuum. Resounding.