The Worldeater Saga, Part L: Syssin Protocol

Gnawing, rampant pain stole away then at Varian’s attempt to regain His fabled composure. He once more looked to His wounded palm, His omniscient attention narrowed by the screaming agony of that pustulent mark. He seized the harmed hand’s wrist with silvery digits still splattered by Lurli’s lurid, diseased blood and twisted, orchestrating a noiseless severance of the wounded appendage. Varyuch the Allfather turned the detached hand about by a simple nudge of His will, His omniscient inspection delving the argent essence comprising the now ruined manus. What He spied served as a phantom of the alarm He felt a breath before: His own essence eaten away not only by eldritch cancer, but a virulent disease beyond His familiarity.

The Celestine cast aside the inert remains, this simple act dissolving the sickened limb into pure essence that rained down upon Mount Memonaransa. Pearlescent light bathed the Court of the Gods in the unmitigated essence of the Creator, suffusing each of Varyan Celestine’s children with power unheard of since the close of the Second Immortal Epoch. No longer a mere torch of incandescence in the dark of a doomed realm, Memonaransa flared like unto a second sun, beckoning the eyes of terrified mortals to witness the final act of the Triomachy.

Then, in a startling repetition of a moment at the open of this fell saga, a flood of inexplicable musical harmony awakened every mind to movements detached from spatial boundary and temporal constraint. Heard above the anguished cries of an imperilled Creation, the chiming symphony bid mortal imagination to extraplanar heights as one incorporeal collective. Hazy images superimposed themselves upon the sight of all beings until the Prime melted away from their vision, allowing them one and all a long glimpse at the hurried labour of an abyssal being wrought from brilliant arcana.

Those experienced in the mysterious art of Numerology felt an altogether different sensation, their unity with the sacred spheres granting them a unique glimpse at the inner workings of this being of planar arcana. For the barest moment, the septenary foundations of Creation revealed their mysteries to these eldritch scholars in the spasms of Odravh’s effortless traversal. Sevenfold were these sights and manifold were the anchors of reality glimpsed: mooring the shores of existence around gentle lapping eddies of was, is, could be, never shall, potentiality and possibility and certainty and causality collided along invisible axes amidst a serenade of numerologically-flawless enlightenment.

Roused to action by the Prime Material’s fraught nearness to absolute extinction, the ancient deity toiled at the nexus of all worlds, Its every laboured motion an expression of purpose manifest. Quintessence of multifarious hues emanated from Its silhouette as It raced through Its abstract realm, sealing Creation’s deepest fractures and stemming the obliterating tide of rampant Divine power. Once more defying precedent, It hastened to hold the realm of all realms together as per the mandate of Its enigmatic Creator. Ailing Aetolia then breathed a sigh of relief as abyssal convalescence took root within its torn fabric, reality’s rents sealed shut by the will of a Being unburdened by chronology or physicality.

With the chaos below brought to awestruck cessation, the Triomachy served as the last remaining light in a realm held together by the hands of an abyssal benefactor.

Dismissing the Zenith as beneath Their notice, the two elder Creator Gods resume Their own battle. Wheresoever Severn attempted to interject, He found Himself beaten back by the combined puissance of two Beings far exceeding His age and experience – a fact that visibly rankled Him. Bereft of a sun’s light, time’s nebulous boundaries became mutable enough to serve as yet another stage to display the Eschaton’s struggle with Varyan Celestine. Light and dark danced to a timeless tune played by omnipotent hands, each violent clash of unstoppable power dappling Aetolian skies with blinding supernovas and chromatic aurorae. Within the raw effulgence of inimically converged power resided a limitless slew of worlds and planes and planetary bodies, shining realms of untouched possibility and hushed wonder.

One by One, Varyan’s pantheon retreated from Their shattered court, save for Two: Damariel and Bamathis.

Through with subtlety and closely guarded wells of omnipotent might, Severn cast His lone arm outward and spoke one harsh, sibilant syllable. Ethereal tendrils tore across an empyreal vault robbed of celestial brilliance from all directions, converging as one within the waiting palm of the ambitious Zenith. Blazing like Sapience’s missing sun, the accumulated luminosity suffused Severn with yet more power. Rendered into pieces in His ceaseless game for boundless power, each mortal Syssin felt their power and essence wane, its depletion serving to bolster the Zenith’s own escalating might.

Oblivious or otherwise indifferent to the unfolding consequence of Severn’s gambit, Varian and the Eschaton continued Their ceaseless clashes.

Newly wrought planetary bodies trembled as Their architects grappled within the travail of eternal acrimony. Esoteric elements beyond fundament and core function bloomed upon the cosmic vine and withered in short order, never to be wielded by mortal hands or bound to reality’s inner workings. Shimmering coronae enfolded those worlds fortunate enough to avoid the obliterating backlash of two Creators awash in the spiralling energy of Their influence and newborn planes collapsed for lack of a place upon the Eschaton’s exalted Spiral, bathing those remaining planetoids in multifarious illumination. Time jerked and juddered as Eschatonic intervention and Varyanic intrusion strained against its limits, the enormity of Their manifold contact enkindling erratic arrhythmia in the heartbeat of the world.

In acknowledgement of a need to reach greater heights, Severn lifted His hand overhead and snapped His fingers, the crisp ‘click’ cutting through the world’s deafening silence.

Suddenly, each Syssin lost contact with their own senses. Blacked out and commandeered by the colossal will of a burgeoning Creator, they never witnessed a moment the rest of Sapience beheld in horror and revulsion. Syssin of all walks of life and citizenships flit from place to place amidst wormholes and shadows unfurled by their callous tyrant of a master, rapidly subduing and hypnotising the entire realm into lending their support – and essence – to the radiant Zenith known as Severn.

As the entirety of Sapience wailed in despair at their sudden frailty, the Minotaur God struggled against the ineffable tides of power raging through him.

Penned by my hand on Kinsday, the 18th of Omeian, in the year 0 AC.