The Account of the Gods - Part 1 Chapter 1

The Account of the Gods

by Jacob Stemhagen

Part 1: Nothing

Chapter 1

Before the polymaths of the Vivenic Empire compiled ‘the Great Annals of Our History’; before the Dwarves were released from their centuries long wandering; before the High Elves awoke inside the girdle of the Mother; and before the stars outshone the Father's forlorn past; there was Eimatä, the Nothingness. The Nothingness is all encompassing, all surrounding, and all that is and ever would be. Contained within itself, everything that would ever come to fruition would be was present. It surpasses every thought and comprehension, for those who have stared into it were unable to draw from reason or speculation or wisdom or arrogance. It absorbs all knowledge and utterly compounds it into a chaotic confusion that is unrivaled by any trickeries of the world, mortal or immortal.

Eimatä, for the greatest part of its lore, was inhabited by two beings only. They were born of the ever expanding fire, and as the fires grew so too did the twins. In the latter years of their peaceful upbringing, they came to call themselves the Twins of Fate; Uirgyl and Vandre, the Decipherer and the Wanderer. The pair was responsible for the upkeep of the greater realm and to ensure that the Nothingness remained true throughout the constant of time; which it would, though enduring great strife. Together, they were the kindred to rule the emptiness, and through it they would uphold the standards of its benevolent unity.

The eldest of the Twins of Fate was Uirgyl; the wisest of all immortals, and the only deity who could ever comprehend the Nothingness in its entirety. His knowledge although great, came with a price and a vow of everlasting silence for only his being could suppress the power of knowing through taciturnity. However, the interpretations of his singular foresight were grossly ridden with instability, but through them, it showed him the contrivance that his folly could bring if he should fail as the Retainer of Cognition, although he ignored them staunchly.

Uirgyl was known to take on many forms of varying visualizations. His celestial presence however concrete, have been blurred as the tales from Vandre passed throughout the ages. In reality, Uirgyl has only taken one true form despite possessing the innate power to change it at his will. His true body is like that of a clockwork angel, although Man’s representation is vastly flawed. Like the Paragon’s of the Dwarves, Uirgyl’s body was garnished by gears of shimmering gold that spun unabatingly. His lengthy wings of fluorescent silver were shown clear by sharp feathers that fell often and regrew before time itself could grasp it. Uirgyl’s long hair was hued in a rich black that rivaled even the Nothingness. His eyes, that same black, perforated through the fibers of the Nothingness to see between the spectrums of what is and what isn't. Apart from his riddling eyes and his scintillating wings, he appeared as but a man. However, that appearance only lasted for a glance, for his shape blurred and it became unclear whenever another looked upon him. When you did look upon him, all that could be seen were the gears of his existence, and all that could be heard were their great churning. A common misconception would be that he was the source of all light, but light did not truly emanate from him, it merely flocked to him for light came from the fires themselves. The flock that surrounded his presence served only a mask to shroud him. The gleam of his wings and the sheen of his gears were amplified by the thralls of light that crowded him, and in that aura his vague presence was always concealed.

The only fault against Uirgyl was his absence of emotion. He was logical beyond any and more intelligent than all living things of Eimatä, but even with all his intellect, he still unable to reason with the complex concepts of emotion; truth and lies, and the spectrums of the living mind. Through his knowing he could fathom no empathy to which only caused him great apathy. This became his only moral standard. He was indifferent in the most absent sense for he knew not what he did. In himself he saw no room for the failures of emotion; he saw no room for the contempt they cause and he was, in his ways, corrupting himself to the blessings of what he did not know.

Vandre, on the other hand, was wholly opposite of his brother. He was the embodiment of the past, present, and the future made physical and living. The title, the Keeper of Time was signature to him and he guarded it with the upmost hostility and paternal protection. Instead of possessing the ability to fully comprehend the Nothingness, Vandre was granted the power to envision it and all of its noble truths and its faithless lies. He could even see into the time before the fire was lit and all the futures, in their infinite probabilities unseen. His physical body was amplified by these aged emotions that existed for as long the Nothingness. Together, years and emotions were his greatest tool.

Through the expanding Nothingness he ambled his way through coarse roads of hatred and anger and contempt; through calm paths of joy and happiness; and through the still ways of sadness and pain. In his wandering, visions of grandeur and of great peril were revealed to him. He could see the many endings of the universe and its great savors. Or, he could see its dark dictators and fell lords that sought only to claim the heart of Eimatä. These visions were the source of his sight as he wandered far and wide through the Nothingness.

Where Vandre was considered to be the most compassionate of the gods, Uirgyl was considered to be the wisest. This was, undoubtedly his greatest fault, and the catalyst of his eventual downfall; for the doom of goodness is empathy that furthers it.

Of all the gods of creation, Vandre was known for being the most ambiguous in appearance. A wisp is what most described him as; with tattered cloth that flowed long and winds back and forth as if it was in a breeze soft breeze. Vandre’s sorrowed hood was tall and it dropped low to cast an eerie shadow over his once hallowed face so none could see it. Others described him as the first reaper of suffering. His body was largely hidden by a long black cloak. His torso was like an old stone wall that had existed for centuries. It was cracked, discolored, chipped, and broken with grey and brown weeds going in all directions. They seemingly masked the stones and their age but instead, gave him an even older appearance, like the aged body of an elderly man who refused to succumb to the Nothingness.

In all his appearances he was faceless, and entangled in the memories of the past, but in the past, present, and the future was his dwelling. He pondered on all the things his foresight could spy and with it he peered into the boundless Nothingness. In its infinity he could espy the hearts and minds of all beings throughout time. He came to be known as the Perpetual Gatekeeper, Vírandar.

The Nothingness is a dreary realm; full of melancholy, and sadness, and most of all: Misunderstanding. Even the twins, feel its great sorrow and misfortune. But the sorrow of Uirgyl was the greatest. Unlike Vandre, Uirgyl quelled all feelings of remorse, and empathy, and lacking from him in a pursuit of true godly perfection. Perfection however, is short lived once it is attained. For time and time again unchecked he continued his labors of crafting and molding his perfect beings, but all those that came into existence were flawed, and misshapen. The gears of creation churned out some who were dark and full of his quelled anger; some were light and full of his dispelled wonder, but they were the most fragile; and others were grey or blurred and held mysterious, unfathomable power. All these were his imperfections reincarnate; his lost wants and his deepest regressions. But Uirgyl tarried on his road of trials until a thought, all new and never seen before, came to the center of his everlasting mind. He would make them new, and all together.

All the beings of that time he created, and all those beings who were filled with his thoughts and tempers were brought forth to him and chained in close quarters by his ethereal essence. The gears of creation began to turn once more and through the grinding he dissected and tore them apart until all their fragmented states was strewn across the black and weary of the Nothingness in great disassemble. When his ill task of hope was complete he reformed them in a monstrous and godly form in the likeness of none that would ever be seen.

Darkness was layered over the astounding light and over the blurred. The bright splotched and the dark thinned and they followed the blurring of knowledge. Time mixed them all together, and with time his imperfect perfections were made new again and singular. He hallowed his creation and filled it with a foresight that was adolescent to Vandre. Upon looking at his creation, Uirgyl stopped and gazed down upon it for a long while.

It was monstrous yet miniscule. It was tattered like Vandre, but it was wholly solid and always visible and completely comprehensible. Patches of different hues and sizes were arrayed about it in oblong shapes. Each patch was bulged or was dented and torn and they were all sewn by stitches of Uirgyl’s own life, and they sustained him. These stitches also kept the light and dark from destroying each other and the blur from melding them together. Its head was large head with the seams connecting it to its hulking shoulders. The fibers of being were always at the brink of tearing, and through the seams at its neck you could peer into the depths of its soul. Deep within was its torment and anguish at the center, but its happiness and humor were clear as well. The eyes were emblazoned like the fires of the Nothingness. They radiated throughout the infinite confines of the Nothingness, and the foresight they gave it caused much confusion for the creation had little comprehension.

Uirgyl stared longer and longer until the creation, in its impatience, lashed out and darted through the Nothingness with unceasing ferocity and graceful elegance. Witnessing this display, Uirgyl grew proud of his monster and bestowed upon it the name of Epadyäd, the Perfect and the Imperfect, in the godly tongue. Then, Uirgyl halted his great gears and said to Epadyäd 'Still your heart, child of my lacking. I have formed you in my likeness to knowledge and that knowledge cannot avail you, for if you let it then even the Nothingness will be in great peril. Now come and rejoice with your father for the times are made joyous again. "And so the thought child of Uirgyl calmed and returned to his place by Uirgyl's side and they whispered philosophy and debated the meanings of several things that are be out of mind to any mortal.

The talk of questions and consideration continued for millennia unchecked and for that time the child and the father grew to love one another very much; Uirgyl held Epadyäd in great esteem and Epadyäd held Uirgyl with great respect in return. But Vandre steadily grew unnerved. Epadyäd was constantly at the forefront of Vandre’s visions as he kept his watch over the wellbeing of Eimatä. Epadyäd’s mind was steadily growing and the seams of his existence were steadily pulling from each other until they were taught and strained against his life. He craved the knowledge his father was giving him and Vandre knew this, for his knowledge of lust was the greatest. Epadyäd never left the forefront of Vandre's worry.

Times however, easily grows sour and wilts into new ages of fell happenings. Uirgyl was yet again ill content with himself, and no matter how hard he fought he could not quell his perceived inadequacy. Epadyäd, becoming aware of this and so followed his father using his envy to ensure Uirgyl never forgot his true failure, which was Uirgyl himself. On a forgotten day, Epadyäd restrained himself from his father and ventured into the black of the nothingness until he came upon a peculiar sight of which was newborn, tender, and utterly unknown.

Eimatä however, had a mind of its own. Within it, it saw the downfall of the Twins of Fate and the beloved Epadyäd. In love it cast out a flesh of itself derived from the very fibers of existence. The Flesh was holy and young and it possessed a new heart, a pure heart, and a sound mind; foreign to the confusing rattle of the Nothingness. In its naivety the Flesh peered into Epadyäd's mind and saw his want to fill Uirgyl’s void. So, the Flesh came forth to face the son in his wandering. When Epadyäd spotted its good graces he was captivated by the Flesh which was majestic to behold.

The Flesh was long and very slender. Radiance burst forth from the fibers that held its life together. It was emblazoned in an aura of life light that blinded all those around it. The wiry light and its radiance was concentrated in the center of its body to culminate into an effulgent power and superior divinity that seemingly dwarfed that of the twins.

Its divinity emanated towards Epadyäd like a fish to a lure. Once Epadyäd came near it absorbed into his being and changed him wholly to its own disguised purposes. Epadyäd then peered into himself and saw his life coming to its bitter end, but it was not yet upon him so he still made time to prepare for the flourishing vision that would come of the Nothingness. The vision of Flesh however, was not akin to his own and that of his fathers, but it intrigued Epadyäd. But shortly after he departed from the Flesh and returned to Uirgyl who was dismayed and he pleaded. 'Father of my mind and being, I have wandered from you and in my wandering I came upon the Nothingness incarnate. Through it I have seen visions contradictory to our own, and in them my end, nay, our end is nigh! The Nothingness is ripening for a new beginning of which we will spoil in and become rotten. Oh father, please cease this useless quest for perfection! Come and rejoice with me in the flowering of your Nothingness! I have been shown a pale light, but it is blurry and I do not fully understand it.' 'What say you, my son? Have you not my vision? Have you no care of what I aspire to accomplish in this confounded nothing? To seek perfection is to seek the Nothingness itself, but to seek its flowering will only tear our realm asunder and leave us in a wake of blissful silence and sleep. What has pervaded your mind to make you think this?' 'Father, the Nothingness has shown me your folly and I will not be a part of it; for I seek the understanding and the newborn light that I have been shown.'

Epadyäd ran from his Father in extreme haste. Uirgyl gave chase but the son was swift and quickly escaped from his father. Uirgyl tried with all his ability to seek after his son, but to no avail as the Nothingness was vast and there was a seemingly unsurmountable distance between them. In Epadyäd's haste he faltered, and in his misstep the Flesh appeared before him, but it did not appear as radiant as it had been previously. It was fell and full of the malice that only Vandre knew. The light gave way to dark seams that split open and pulled the fabric of life over itself revealing the deeper Eimatä that hidden in the Flesh. The fabrics of the Nothingness that made him were already tattered with many torn strings the flailed wildly. Suddenly, it seized Epadyäd and wrapped his being into its own. The fibers took him to the very heart of the Flesh and in it, it transformed him from his inner goodness to much darker favors. He was terrible to see, with his form now shadowed, the patches of creation now ill and decayed.

The Flesh quickly regurgitated Epadyäd into the Nothingness with cruel force. Pain suddenly overtook him and he shrieked and recoiled from it. The suffering of Epadyäd was so great that it caused several tumults that rocked the Nothingness and gave way to new life and new creations that would remain unknown forever.

Before the declining Epadyäd, the Flesh laughed and rejoiced in his confounding of the son. 'Behold! Child of the Nothingness, for I have misshapen thee and bestowed upon you a new and terrible form. You have been returned you to the Nothingness from whence you belong! The fibers of my creation are potent and just one foul strand can corrupt any good that comes before it. But I possess many and through them you are now mine. And in your mistake, you have taken me for a child, new and unlearned, but you have been deceived. Unbeknownst to you, child, I was never of the Nothingness. I am the Nothingness and now you will fall to the bidding of Onephír, the Corrupter."

With his last word the Nothingness absorbed Epadyäd and it sundered him into many pieces of distorted shapes and scattered them far, far away amongst the fibers of the Nothingness. Uirgyl however, sought for Epadyäd but his attempts were all in vein as Epadyäd was now many and far away, but Uirgyl tarried on in search of his lost son.

The soul essence of Epadyäd, unlike his body, remained so that Onephír could siphon it from him. His essence was so vigorous that it permeated through the fibers of his being with such an immense force that he began to transform and devolve from ethereal godhood to into corporeal matter. The Flesh’s new body grew be akin to Epadyäd and his father. Legs and arms sprouted from his sides and solidified. His center contorted and pushed itself up and out to form his head. His eyes grew slowly and with great pain, but the pain that came after outmatched all of his suffering. The remaining essence became trapped in his new body. As the pressure increased it began to push its way out as furiously as it could. It bore through his head to make his mouth and nose and fled into the Nothingness, but Onephír ignored the pain and reached out and captured the essence with his spirt, holding it captive.

The body of the Flesh was now indeed of the flesh, and it ached with his metamorphosis. His body was still full of light and still it was shrouded by it. But Onephír in his anger dispensed all the light from him and it fled in all directions. His form was now encased in darkness and hardened by the natural cold that inhabited Eimatä. Like the darkness, the cold dyed his skin with the deepest blue and the harshest black. His figure cracked and healed quickly but cracked once more and afterwards retained its rigidness that appalled most who looked upon Onephír. The Flesh’s mouth and nose were dashed and sliced by the expelled essence; it would cause him immense pain till the end of his days. His eyes, in his anger began to shine like that of polished gold and they retained that same texture till his fall.

After the Flesh’s transformation, with the spirit of Epadyäd, he fled to far edges of the Nothingness until the heat of the fires warmed his being and eased his frail body. But the Flesh became absorbed in his work. He bore from himself absolute hatred and unadulterated evil to form a girdle to encompass his project. The girdle was raised and thickened until the Flesh fashioned it into a circle, and thrust it into the Nothingness. It took the form of Vantablack, with no eyes of any kind being able to peer through it so it was hidden from perception and even the greatest of visions. When time had passed and the corruption finished, the circle began to stretch and arc itself until it was a sphere clothed in darkness. Inside the sphere, dark gales and shrieking winds of mist and shadow swirled in kindred motions as they mixed the foul air in constant motion.

At the center of the sphere, Onephír retrieved the captive spirit of Epadyäd. It was still and dim as it had lost all faith of restoration. But Onephír, still seeing use in the spirit implanted it in the walls of the sphere. In an instant it permeated throughout its entirety. The walls were its new prison, but they also served as its sapper as the spirit of a god is potent and may be used for millennia to come to empower anything beyond the natural limits. When the spirit was implanted, the sphere came to life and the powers it gave flooded toward Onephír and it vested him with the ability of creation and all things entangled. The sphere became known as the Pharavöd, the Evil Void and the foulest realm in all the Nothingness.

The walls and borders of the immortal black became slick with the ooze of death and decay. Repulsive scents and vile toxins began to waft throughout the Void in twirling hazes of green, purple, and black. Pharavöd was divided into two hemispheres: Nutania and Dírheim. Nutania is the Dark Sky, the home of the Främwrar, the perch of the black mountains, and is hidden by intense smokes and mists that emanates from the walls. The Dírheim is the Underworld, the physical and the tangible evil, it houses the Vantablood in all forms, the creatures of darkness and citadels of domination that would cast from it the foulest of abominations. The hemispheres however, never touch each other. They are separated by a layer of haze that is forever indispensable. The separation between them is only observed by the dense haze that hovers slightly over the divide at the middle of the realm. If you were to walk through the grounds of the Dírheim, you would never see the floor, but it was always constant as an invisible observer.

When the hemispheres were formed, Onephír raised himself up into the Nutania and exhaled a portion of Epadyäd’s essence from the confines of his body. The essence, now free to wander, dispersed itself, but would eventually meld into groups that formed into a dark grey smoke. The smoke clouds grew very large and the more they stretched, the more violent they became. Suddenly, lightning pierced the edges and came battering down on the ground below. Thunder roared soon after and shook the ground in its wake uprooting many dead trees and loose stones. Inside, the clouds had grown so large that they became hallow. Shrouded beings with yellowed eyes and mighty hammers emerged from within the smoke and they began to forge the great lightning of which they use to attack in mass collection. At the center of each cloud, the Främwrar, the Thunder Giants, hold a large citadel. It is wreathed in smoke, and decorated in a luminescent yellow. They stood tall and proud but they were never seen beyond the interiors of the clouds for the smoke that came from the citadels were the sources of the clouds illusion and so they hid them. They were known as the Främyals, the Thunder Citadels, and the home of the Thundering Kings, the Främlins.

The Thunder Giants reigned as the most aggressive of all the beings to inhabit the realm, but their hostility would create another being to rival them, and become their mortal enemy and their greatest test of strength: The Obelisks. These towering beings derived from the essence that fled from the lightning that was flung to the earth by the Thunder Giants. When the lightning shattered the stones of the floor, the essence crept from the ruin and solidified them. When the clouds and the Främwrar had past, and their rage with them the essence took to the stone and collectivized them into pillars that loomed over the ground before them, casting immense shadows. These stones were given life by the essence and held together by its ethereal presence. When they were animated, the Obelisks would transform from their pillar likeness into that of a stone giant. They would roam the lands about them until more storms came their way. When the storms arrived, the Obelisks would transform again and sit dormant in their stance. The Obelisks as a physical defiance of the cruelty by the Främlins causing much strife between the two creatures.

When the tyranny of the Främlins was seemingly at a rest, Onephír came down before the grey landscape of the Void. It was barren, desolate, dreary and mostly uninhabited apart from the wandering Obelisks. Where there wasn’t grey there was black, and where there wasn’t black there was grey. It was the commonality of the realm. Onephír however, grew distasteful of its blandness for he had grandiose visions for his realm of darkness.

Onephír was fond of danger and high places for he enjoyed in the partaking of flight and wandering, like Vandre. So, on an especially barren plain, Onephír touched his feet to the cold soil and raised his blackened and scarred hands to the sky. As he did so the ground began to shake. Trees were uprooted, stones were shattered and catapulted across the land. Smoke and mist and gas of all dark colors burst from the earth and dissipated into the atmosphere or clung on the ground. After some time, the ground started fissure and crack. Sinkholes were formed, caves were dug by the quaking earth, and large hills and mounds formed around the crack and crevices of the floor about them. But none of these were as mighty and as foreboding as the Flesh’s great mountains, the Nülavants

The Nülavants eventually became commonplace in the Void. Onephír wandered and where he wandered, great hulking mountains were raised. The great mountains were rigidly tall and very steep, with little flat land except by their base. Nülavants stemmed on forever and on until they disappeared out into the Nothingness. Horizons were marked by the brightest white streaks that split the mountain peaks from the Vantablack sky and the mist that mixed with it all. Faint gray streaks of falls and precipices and ridges ran up and down and below the mountains as they outlined the diverse array of features that inhabited them.

At the very center of the Pharavöd was the tallest of all the black mountains. It was the hued the deepest black, like an abyss or dark tunnel. Looking towards it stirred the greatest fear of any other in the Void, far greater than any Främwrar. Its base was surrounded by rolling hills and the deepest crevices that became so cold that they froze over and hid themselves from passerby’s until the time came where the mountain would swallow them. Beneath it lied extensive caves and tunnels that led in in all directions and eventually came to the same place, the heart of the mountain. The Nülavant would come to be known as the Dhénfalkt, the Fell Farewell.

The walls of the Void, as stated before, were the arcs of the sphere that was Pharavöd. From the midsection, between Nutania and Dírheim, the floor rose up and down, arcing towards either pole. They met at the pole and connected to form the girdle which expanded into the sphere. After the Voids founding, Onephír returned to the walls embraced them in the Vantablack, and strengthened them with the life of the former Epadyäd.

In their servitude to the Flesh’s will, the walls would sprout from themselves creations of their design. These creations were small and fiercely gruesome to behold. Mist shrouded them, but their crimson eyes pierced the darkness like a sword upon the living so that they had clairvoyance to see through their hidden realm. The Mortŷls, as they would come to be named, were the first beings of the Nothingness who did not possess immortal life. They would be birthed from the walls and they would inevitably come back to their birth places to be reabsorbed and then created a new and more fell. During their lives they would come and live upon the Nülavants and inside the deep places of the Void until such times when their services would be called upon by Onephír.

Onephír, in his creations of new lands and new beings unwillingly but acceptingly sparked great hostility amongst the Pharavöd. The whole of its geography grew to be hostile. Nutania was littered with the roaming Främwrar and their warring thunder clouds, the ground was home to the Obelisks as they shattered stones and hurled them across the skies, and Mortŷls were free to roam as they pleased, bothering all. However, no other place of the Pharavöd was as feared and as evil as the Klagrims, the Pits of the Damned.

The pits came to be the homes of the greatest and the most fearsome of Mortŷls, the Leviathans. These newborn Mortŷls, instead of being born from the walls of the Void, were born from its deep core, Syyden. The Deep Core of the Void was the place of which all the Klagrims originated. Unlike the original tunnels and caves that came after the raising of the Nülavants, the Klagrims came from the fury of the newborn Leviathans. The first Leviathans upon their birth became enraged and began to smash the walls until they were piles of fine dust and pebbles. After it was over, the Leviathans were sparse, but still remained angry and kept on tunneling until the whole of them had reached the surface, and when they did they attacked all before them. As the generations went on and on new Klagrims were dug or continued. Syyden became a hive of mystery and confusion only inhabited by themselves and other Mortŷls who dared to wander the Leviathans dwellings.

In the deepest places of the pits, and even deeper than Syyden, the Leviathans became lost and frustrated. They would turn against their brothers and partake in great battles until great caverns were hewn from the dark stone. Thick rivers of their oozing blood flowed into these new caverns to make bubbling blood pools that would spit out poisons and toxins that infested the lower Klagrims. Eventually the blood was attracted the Vantablack of the deep core and together they mixed to from the Vantablood, a sludge of powerful properties and ambiguous effects upon its holder. The subterranean lakes and rivers of Vantablood flowed from their holders and traversed the Klagrims until they spilled out into the broken, battle ridden landscape of the Void. The blood that spilled pooled once more on the surface and poisoned the minds of the Mortŷls even further so the once timid Mortŷls began to start great battles that ensued over the simplest of aggressions.

When the Flesh’s labor was complete, he returned from his wandering and descended down into his Pharavöd near the base of the Dhénfalkt. Obelisk battled Leviathan, Mortŷls swarmed Obelisks, and the Leviathans crushed Mortŷls underfoot leaving the dead in glorious array throughout the battlefields of these Mortŷls. The Void was teeming with the aggressive poison of the Vantablood. Hatred and death culminated into the dark skies to form thick clouds of gaseous Vantablack. The Vantablack clouds infused with the Främwrar’s clouds and became more violent and quick moving as it cast out bolts of lightning that changed colors to purple, blue, and a shining white that cracked the sky that it shot through. When the lightning struck the grounds of the Pharavöd it ripped up the stone and cracked and shattered it into many pieces sending boulders and splinters and sharp spears of stones flying in all directions. By the time Onephír made his descent, the new storm clouds had ripped up a great portion of the surface, and the beings of his creations had littered the ground with their bones and gore.

The lightning however, dared not to strike upon the Flesh for the Flesh was the master of all, and like everything in Pharavöd, it fell to his bidding. On a large plateau near Dhénfalkt, overseeing the battle under him, the Flesh made his landing. The plateau was softly colored as it evaded the bombardments of the skies and the battles of the Mortŷls. It was well illuminated by the lightning that was thrown unceasingly the Främwrar’s. In the center of the plateau, near a large grove of tattered trees, a large opening that lead into a Klagrim opened wide and went down sharply into the mountains base.

Over the entrance, Onephír peered into the bleak tunnel. With his sight he spied the dark beings that laboriously tunneled in anger, and those that were staunchly battling others, and all those in between. They would however, be of no concern to Onephír and his task. The entrance was wide and open to him, but after he ventured into it, he wanted none to follow after him. So, erected a large portcullis from the remains of a long dead Leviathan. Its skin had all rotted and its spirit fled long before. But the bones and indestructible plates of its armor were free for the taking. Its adamantine bones were raised by magic and carved into a circular hatch that hung in between in a large arcing gate made from the creature’s spine. At the borders of the plateau, walls of stone from Syyden were raised and enchanted with mystical spells and surreal magic’s only known to Onephír.

When the hatch was closed, shadow began to build up and become thick and vengeful. The Flesh used this darkness to blind any who sought entrance. Upon opening the hatch the shadow enveloped whomever attempted to enter, and made it impossible to see the way back and only illuminated the way down, into the Klagrim and to their fate. Only the wisest and most powerful of beings ever dared to enter the Onephír gate to his first kingdom.

From the gates, the tunnels of the Klagrim went down far into the earth. Almost as far as the Deep Core. Instead of the tunnels focusing on the path towards Syyden, the tunnels instead burrowed more toward the heart of the Dhénfalkt. The heart of the mountain, and all the other mountains like it, was vastly empty and uninhabited as they are hallowed and sacred to even the most evil of creatures. Instead of black, the cavern was lit by arrays of purple crystals that were larger than any seen before. They were collectivized in large clumps that dotted the cardinal directions of the heart. At the roof, stalactites hung far and sharp as they threatened to break loose and impale any who wandered in the hallowed ground. On the floor, antonymous stalagmites rose as tall and as sharp like towers on a hill top. In the center of the cavern the largest stalactites and stalagmites arose in unison and at the mark separating the two a large crystal heart with veins of black was floating. The crystal spun constantly and it beat like a dark heart in the body of a demon. Every time it beat, it sent forth an impulse that empowered the mountain and all those that if fathered.

When Onephír came upon the heart, it filled him with lust and an insatiable craving for it. He desired it with all his being and he yearned for its possession. Steadily, he made his way from the tunnel into the gaping cavern. As he got closer, the hearts beat grew even greater. But the power of the heart would not deter the Flesh for its resistance was no challenge to his god hood. He slowly clambered up the large stalagmite and as he did he ripped pieces of it away and sent them falling down its face. When Onephír came before the heart, it called to him and gained his enamor. It wanted him to collect it from its perch. With the utmost malice he ripped it from its rest. The heart however, was not enough. The heart in its physical form was merely a vessel so it was unable to bestow the Flesh with its power so he crushed it in his hand with terrible effect.

The blood of the broken heart bled profusely from its torn veins. As the blood poured down the Flesh’s frame he smiled and through his hand he absorbed the life blood of the mountain. The fibers of Onephír’s existence teemed with anticipation, but before the fibers could transplant the life blood to be recycled by the Nothingness, Onephír severed its passage and directly absorbed it into himself bolstering his power. The blood however, was extremely potent, and in its potency it boiled and burned the Flesh’s body causing great agony. But the Flesh was of the Nothingness and that gave him resilience to carry on so until all the life blood was sucked from the heart. When he finished sapping the heart of its properties it fell from the Flesh’s hand, empty and lifeless.

The life blood of the Dhénfalkt was one of the greatest prizes of the Pharavöd. It granted great strength that coursed through the body of its beholder, immortal or not. The Flesh however, was more than an immortal. He was of the Nothingness itself. Where the blood would have empowered its owner, it only amplified the god hood of the Flesh to the point of which it could ascend to that of Uirgyl and Vandre, and appear as ruler over both immortals and mortals of the Void.

But the sapping of the life blood was more than it seemed. Without the heart of the mountain, Dhénfalkt became unstable and began to crack and crumble until the great rows of rock and ice shattered and fell to the base of the mountain. The great peak itself was no longer a hallowed ground. It quaked under its breaking feet and the cracking glaciers of its top screamed as they broke apart. The ground beside the mountains fissured once more like in the days when it was raised. The fissures however, were far greater. They cracked the ground to the deep core and flooded it with Vantablood and haze and the corpses of the killed.

In Pharavöd’s skies, the enchanted clouds of the Främwrar that battered the ground incessantly heard the mountains call and were drawing near. But the Främlins did not approach the peak as friends, nay they came as its killing blow. The clouds grew large and eminent with their thunder rearing back to blow apart the skies about the mountain. From the Främyals, the forges were stifling with heat and the Främwrar’s that used them cast out furious explosions infused with rivalrous anger to attack Dhénfalkt with the savage lightning. The roaring thunder that followed seemed to crack the sky with smoke and haze leaking from the Void and venturing out into the Nothingness.

When the lightning struck the mountain it exploded into vibrant arrays of color and debris. The lightning struck again, and again, and again each time more urgent and powerful. The slopes of the mountain broke and started to slide down the hill side and avalanches stampeded after them. The bombardment carried on for a long while until the whole of the mountain was razed and turned into a deep valley of ash dark and rivers.

Deep under the valley, Onephír was buried alive amongst crystal, and stone, and blood, both his own and that of the hearts. He remained buried there for quite some time until his strength returned to him, and when it did the Flesh exuded his raw power and turned the stone that encased him into molten slag. After he was free to move he quickly bore through what was left of the cavern. The cavern had caved in around the center leaving its edges as the only open space. A great portion of the light giving crystals had fractured or shattered, their energy now gone. From the excess space he bore again until he was out into the surface.

The surface of the newly formed valley was dank and frost ridden. The black ash that was once Dhénfalkt was coarse and frozen together into sheets that layered upon one another. As the hills rose around the valley so too did the ash. With rocks they formed spear like structures that lanced into the air and came to a sharp point at the end. After the cataclysm many rivers formed from the melted glaciers and ice caps of the peaks. Over their flowing they merged and became grey and tainted, more so than any other river in the Void, especially those that were tainted by the Vantablood. In the sky, the clouds that had destroyed Dhénfalkt had departed. They left clear visibility of the skies above him and the roof that encapsulated the whole realm.

Onephír climbed from his tunnel with ease. When he was free in the open air again he began to gaze about the valley and all the desolation of its calamity. He bestowed upon the new land the name of ‘Délhanfalkt’, the Valley of Farewells. After, he hallowed the ground once more and laid a curse upon it so no being, immortal or mortal could tread upon its ash lain fields.

As he trekked through the wasteland he remembered the heart and that he still possessed the treasure. So, he reached into his being, and from the fibers of himself he pulled the heart of the mountain, new and beating. Stepping into the murky waters of the river he sunk the heart into the grey clad river. The heart, as it was being lain, began to beat again. It gave new life to the land and from the heart, new beings were awoken from its vibrancy.

The greatest of these new beings were fearsome to behold and when beheld they instilled the greatest dread that any Mortŷls could inflict. They are among the largest of any of the Mortŷls easily dwarfing the tempered Leviathans. Onyx was the color of their presence, as if the Vantablack was their skin and shield. They are of shadow with large fiery eyes, with pupils of purple surrounded by green irises. The corners of their eyes rose up into smoking towers that arose towards the sky like a fire in the wind. Their bodies were long and armored, but slender, with four legs of equal size dressed in spikes. On their backs, great wings that spanned for miles were folded in on themselves, waiting for the moment that they could leap to the sky. When they took to the air you could see their canvas like wings which were painted in a deep green, like that of a soul, with sharp streak of black, like veins, running all throughout them. At the end of their bodies, an even slenderer tail waved back and forth with two ridges of spikes going from the back to the edges of the tail. The end of the tail split into two parts with the ridges departing following the remaining length to its sharp end. At its end, the tail wielded a coiled whip with serrated blades of bone that could cleave any before it. These beings scared were so frightening that Onephír himself became dreadfully fearful of them. In that fear he called them the Tasöah, the Even Terror.

When the Tasöah arose, Onephír grew scared and weary of their domineering monstrousness. Quickly, he fled from them and left the valley to their protection until the time came when he would need to call upon them for assistance. Until then, the Tasöah ravaged any who came near that sacred ground.

Far from the Délhanfalkt, Onephír roamed through great canyons and high ranges; through the dark abysses of the Klagrims, and over blood rivers for the Flesh was searching for a land to claim as his capital of immortal dominion. In a vision revealed to him during his captivity under the Délhanfalkt, a machination came to him. He saw a land called the Käl-Vaíatar. The Käl-Vaíatar however, was naturally illusive, and like an oasis hidden by a mirage, it evaded Onephír. But Onephír was relentless and he chased the hidden city until its mirages failed it, and the city became trapped in a deep cavern of an isolated Klagrim – a Klagrim of which was the darkest and filled with evil.

This Klagrim, the Dane, which is The Dread Tunnel is the largest vein of the furthest east mountain range of the Void. It runs deep into realm, until it reaches Syyden and then continues on until it reaches the southern pole of Pharavöd. The Leviathans that dug this tunnel were great in numbers, and when they began their great battle amid it, they bore with the intense passion of war until it was larger than any other and smoother than the untouched surface. At the bottom, past Syyden, many hidden lakes and vast seas sit silently and sustain the Mortŷls that live there. The deepest of the many seas was hidden from the other by an extended passage, but the cavern it sat in was infected by the Vantablood. When it bred with the black waters it grew to levels of potency that would grant any who held it magical abilities to rival, even the Obelisks.

When the Void was empowered by the soul of Epadyäd, a portion of such a soul was able to seep through the walls and hide itself in the deeps of the realm. Without enough potency to cast itself out into the Nothingness, it instead formed itself into a living city. However, it was afraid of Onephír, so it hid itself in the magic’s of illusion and tempted fate till the day came when the Void, in servitude, made its presence aware to the flesh

On the eastern shore of the largest lake the Käl-Vaíatar made its final rest, to wait for Onephír to find it. When the Flesh discovered had ambled his way into the vast caverns of the deep, he was shocked at its sight, but it would not waylay him. The prize of his vision was now in his sight. This place, where the city rested, would be his holdfast and his capital.

The Flesh, coming down from the high entrance of the cavern came at last came into the dominion of the Käl-Vaíatar. The ground around it radiated with mystical energies; the area around it blurred, and shook, and changed again and again creating confusion for those who witnessed It. Far off in the distance Leviathans and other Mortŷls fled from the sight of the city and of Onephír.

The dread gates, upon his arrival, materialized before him in a dazing spectacle. Immediately, the gates flung open before him, ushering in the stench of the water and the haze of the cavern to its innards. When the Flesh broke the threshold of the city, it appeared barren and upheld the appearance of the rest of the Klagrim. But as he took his first steps into the gate, the whole of the city instantaneously materialized and set itself into the life stones and the foundations of the Klagrim. From the gate and the walls large hulking towers that bore into the ceilings of the cave rose quickly and broke through to the surface. These towers rose even further into the sky with great fires a light a top their precipices. Great forges belched black smoke through the air and it billowed through the Klagrim until it reached the surface, but the all that was released was sucked into the arid sky of the Pharavöd. Walls of life stone imbued with the magic of the Vantablack were erected in maze like array and they towered before him prodigiously. At the center of the encampment, the ground fell away into the abyss of the Nothingness and was remade with the Vantablack into a large citadel that terraformed the whole of the cavern. It pressed upon the lakes and seas until they were shrunken and given new shores. Rivers of Vantablood and Blackwater were forced into canals and new rivers that wound about and through the city in all directions. The Vantablood that now permeated the city cast a new power of strength and fortitude over its physicality and masked it from all who came before the city so it appeared like the cavern of the past.

The great doors of the citadel bore a certain weight and power upon Onephír. It was reminiscent of greater ambition, but also of doubt, not in himself or his abilities, but of those who opposed him. It gave him want and filled him with greed so that he would claim the citadel and Käl-Vaíatar. To take up the title of the Voids overlord and rule it without challenge for the seat of the city was the seat of the realm. These doors were hewn from the rocks of the Deep Core that radiated black smoke. Their faces were like embers and they burned quietly but red hot. Glimmers of the embers and of the charred wood could be seen all throughout its structure. Great beams of stone and the dead wood, imbued in the Vantablood were lain over it. Upon their opening, the doors creaked like a banshee that sent shivers down the spines of those who entered.

The citadels inside was boundless and empty. On the walls and posts throughout it, large crystals were inserted in hard carven faces that cast light out across but the room, but the light was always dim. Aside from the decorations of faces, a large stone chair was the single monument that lived inside the great hall. It sat on a raised platform of carven living stone that contained veins of Vantablood that burrowed and cut through the stone, enchanting it and the throne that sat upon it. The throne was large and sturdy. Its back rose tall with a rounded tapering that diminished towards the center into a point. Directly below the point, a large red gemstone glowed throughout the darkness and illuminated the floor at its front. All the around, the chair was carven and tailored in elaborate patterns made from various stones and other lesser gemstones. The seat was clad in the softened hide of Leviathan; the arms were made from the limbs of a fallen Obelisk.

It beckoned to the Flesh, repeatedly called him by the name of ‘master’ and ‘taker’. Onephír hesitated to answer the seats summons, but slowly he began to tread towards it. As he grew closer the allure of the chair, and its the power of manipulation over him as well. The Seat of Käl-Vaíatar was the great hive mind of this living city and it needs of a master was great, and that master was Onephír.

Finally, the Flesh reached the great throne. It emanated power and called to him stronger than it had before. Like a force incomprehensible and undeniable it pulled at the very being of the Flesh until the moment he sat upon its skin clad rest. When he did, the great bells of the citadel rang above him with thunderous applause. Behind him, the doors to the hall were swiftly shut and barred with the dead wood. Even the gems from the carven faces ceased their light and sat quietly.

From the chair, an aura began emerge that radiated a glowing strength that grappled Onephír and held him tightly to its back. Then the aura grew rapidly and departed itself from the seat and hung over the struggling body of the Flesh. It floated in mysticism for a short while before speaking to Onephír. ‘You have fallen prey to my trap, Onephír. And my trap has been long awaiting your arrival. I thank the realm that it gave up my city to you, for this city is not of your dreams, but of mine. Behold! For I am Epadyäd, or what is left of him. You sundered my body, sapped my soul from its vessel, and used my remains to build this evil place. Now I will relish in seeing it all fall to ruin before you!’ And with that final word, Onephír’s newfound godhood was sapped from him as the aura invaded his body and tore the power from his center. The stolen power was centralized and forged into a great beam of defiant and spiteful energy that split the citadel at its ceiling, bursting through the void, and sending a great warning cry throughout the Nothingness.

Uirgyl was coming to reclaim his lost son.