The Worldeater Saga, Part XLI: To Continue
As adventurers scattered to report to their gods, tenebrous wisps of shadowy smoke conspired atop Mejev Nider Nesve wo Ti, Matati wo Eja sota Aran wo Aransa.
From their conjunction came a gateway through which Severn, the Manipulator stepped. Casting His gaze toward the warfare continuing to rage across and throughout all the expanse of heavenspace, the Minotaur God extended His sole hand outward towards the fraying edges of Umbrael. The sky rippled as Severn tore free His enigmatic shroud from its place above Sapience, leaving the realm bereft of a barrier against the turmoil churning overhead. As the Manipulator’s cloak returns to its owner, it cast shimmering streams of purest possibility in its wake, incensing the tumult overhead into greater rumbles and flickering theatrics. Though neither Creator cast an eye towards Reason’s action, the intensity of Their perceived violence heightened now that nothing girded the world from Their collective rancour.
As the Eschaton and Varian Celestine continued Their ceaseless war within an arena a world away, the shocking carnage found an unlikely competition for mortal eye and rapt attention: Umbrael’s billowing underside.
Suffused with the radiance of six hundred days of monomachial struggle, the cloak’s underside reflected an endless expanse of nebulaic colour and shimmering, forbidden stars. Entire worlds, ripe upon the vine of possibility, dappled its tremendous reach, hinting at the sheer quantity of power infused within each and every thread.
As wars raged upon the surface of an unfortunate world birthed into existence for the purposes of eternal struggle, both Creators reached within that arena simultaneously. Varyan’s unmitigated serenity and focus clashed against the Eschaton’s ethereal grace, a rippling thud racing across the incomprehensible distance between Their arena and the prize awaiting the victor of Their struggle. Aetolia itself shuddered in the face of cosmic carnage, its trembling bringing about the breakage of some weary, swiftly deteriorating dam.
Brilliant spirals of starfire and crackling tongues of Immortal lightning coursed across the sky, carving deep cracks into Sapience’s skyscape. The unknowable void betwixt planes yawned open within those impossible scars, bestowing gibbering madness upon those minds unfortunate enough to behold its absolute vacuity. Shamans, priests, soothsayers, witches, warlocks, sages, and other spiritualists who dared stare into the abyss found only gibbering madness staring back, driving them into a fatal spiral of insanity that was felt across the realm entire.
Each intervention, each arrangement of divine providence then acted as a brutal lever, prying the Creator-wrought rents further open amidst discordant clicks and otherworldly groans. Cracking akin to an egg, the sky-dome’s ceiling caved inward towards the realm, fluorescent destruction carving a waterfall of obliterating might through reality’s fabric. Other sections of the celestial stage defied this destruction, though they buckled and swelled, bespeaking the horror that awaited its chance to breach the world.
Severn then swiftly donned His nebulaic mantle, suffusing His bulky silhouette with a shimmering aura of pearlescent essence. All the world’s deceptive shade exulted in the glory of its unfettered king, the gelid seethe of darkness celebrating an ascendant might capable of displacing an erstwhile, embattled queen from the supernal throne of misery.
Maddening whispers devoured mortal thought upon Sapience then as Sevren spoke unto them:
“Vincz avej.”*
The Manipulator, Lord of Reason, Artificer to the Father Above, Betrayer to the Favoured Son, the Forsaken One, issued only a sharp gesture with His remaining arm and then discorporated amidst an oily smear of darkness, conveying Him to parts unknown.
As soon as the Minotaur God took His leave, the sky issued a tremulous convulsion, allowing more of that fell quintessence to rain down upon the realm. It soaks now into every stretch of land it touches, suffusing Sapience with nascent possibilitya
*: Scholars of language capable of piecing together fragments of the Czjetijan tongue report that this translates to something akin to “now I continue.”
Penned by my hand on Quensday, the 7th of Arios, in the year 513 MA.
