the Mythologia Elyden - Part 5 (Patreon)

Part 4 

“And the Two-and-Twenty reached a conclusion. They yearned for their Father, they yearned for the tools of their trade to be returned to them. They would link the sphere with the matter, so that they might reach up and touch their Father and pick up their tools and become whole once more. Thus, was conceived the Bridge of Eternities, their great plan to bridge the void that had come into their lives. Yet in that hubris lay the seed of destruction that would bring the time of the Demiurges to an end.”

the Lament of shibboleth

The Two-and-Twenty tribes and their masters, the Demiurges of myths forgotten, spread throughout the Island of Creation, their cultures developing as their knowledge of the world around them increased. Not all tribes advanced at the same rate, but each matured into a nations and empires renowned for different characteristics - not unlike the Demiurge masters.

The tribes continued expanding until a time came where there was little room left for them. The mortals had not yet learnt the skills needed to navigate the roiling waves of their oceans and so believed that there was no place left for them to go. With food scarce and disease increasing with the numbers of mortals, the Demiurges’ thoughts trailed to an age before they were forced to walk Elyden as glorified mortals – they remembered the Material from where they once shaped Elyden with intangible bodies.

Their minds corrupted through age and the absence of The Shaper, the Demiurges came to believe that they could, with sufficient effort and work, shape the matter of Elyden to increase the size of the Island of Creation.

But beneath this thought there lurked a deeper desire. The Demiurges all yearned, in some form or another, to return to their prior divinity, to create a link to the Otherworld they were born into and cursed to forsake.

The Demiurges were once masters of shaping matter to match their emotions and desires, but their years spent amongst mortals, cut off from the link with The Shaper, had caused their talents to wither and their divinity to leak away. Despite this, their ability to shape creation still surpassed that of the mightiest shaper.

Intent on giving their tribes room in which to grow, the Demiurges set about shaping sea and stone, earth and wind, fire and air, to increase the size of the Island of Creation. It was not an easy task, and it seemed as though the dream of independence from the other tribes required them to work together, if at least until the task was complete.

It began with the Demiurges and their desire to ascend to their lost glory. Where not all of the Two-and-Twenty agreed on their new outlook towards the Great Shaper, their divine Father, The Shaper, they all desired to return to the life they had been created to live. Amongst them, the Demiurge Allaishada longed for the gaze of her creator the most and could not bear to live with the innocent, yet flawed, mortals she had helped create – the pain of reliving her sins every time she saw one of her followers was too great.

The dream of being reunited with her Father fuelling her, she travelled alone throughout the Island of Creation, moving from tribe to tribe with word of her desire. She explained her plight – that of being closer with The Shaper. Some of her siblings agreed with her and joined her, though others needed more persuading. The promise of a return to the Material was enough to lure the others to her cause. One, the Demiurge Talantehut, distanced herself from the efforts of her siblings and forevermore earned their enmity, becoming known as the Shunned One. Her distance aside, one by one the Demiurges came to agree that theirs was a life wasted on Elyden – to reach their full potential, to become the apex of what they could be, they had to leave Elyden and return to the Material. In the eyes of some that in itself was the goal – to become Shapers once more. To others it was merely the means by which they would become one with their Father once more.

Allaishada called on her siblings, persuading all but three of them to join her cause. Talantehut was lost to the world, a melancholic mendicant with no home. Arimaspi had forsaken the trappings of civilisation, and would have no part in the dealings of his siblings. Malachai was little different, but as she journeyed to his lands, she found that he had twisted his tribe into not only forsaking The Shaper, but renouncing his claim on their spirits, worshipping Malachai as a supreme deity instead. This perversion of the true law of Elyden sickened her and she done her best to bring him and his people back into the light, but it was not to be and he attacked her missionaries in protest. This escalated in a savage, if short war that consumed much of Allaishada’s strength (in no small part thanks to Rachanael’s secret alliance with Malachai – a plan to accomplish just such a thing)

Having united all but three of the Two-and-Twenty, a weakened and increasingly desperate Allaishada called for a meeting to take place in the only place on the Island of Creation the mortals could not reach. And so it did. On the apex of Mount Sumeria did the Demiurges gather for the Great Conclave. It was the first and last time all Two-and-Twenty Demiurges would gather in one place, for even Talantehut came to honour the blood-bond with her siblings.

And so the Great Conclave was called and each of the Two-and-Twenty voice its opinions. They spoke at length and debated, their different reasons resonating against one another. Those who longed for The Shaper did not want those who sought the Material purely for its own pleasure to have a part in their undertaking. They, Allaishada mostly, wanted no more than to feel their Father close by. They would have gladly sacrificed their divinity to attain such an existence once more. Conversely, those who wanted to return to the Material thought their other siblings sentimental for wanting to return to the one who had banished them to Elyden. They relished the gift over matter they had once possessed. Rachanael, most of all, yearned for the power once held. Still, there were those impartial to matters of their family or power, who wanted no more than a chance to Shape great things as they had once done – and this was the only chance they would have while on Elyden. The chief proponent this group was Synchthonith, and they wanted no more than to shape. They accepted their mistake and the fact that their Father had disowned them. But they had been created as artisans, and they were not fulfilling that role on Elyden.

They debated the matter at hand at length, and finally reached a conclusion.

Whatever their individual goals, they reached an accord – existence without the Material would kill them. It would drive them insane, cause them to despair, to live evermore in anguish. That could not be. They had been punished enough and deserved to return to the life they once knew. All their goals, disparate as they seemed, revolved around one thing – the Material, and returning to it.

Though individually their powers of shaping (through both the entities of the Firmament and the Atramenta, and their innate talents) Elyden and, to a greater extent, the Material, were vast, the scope of what they deemed necessary to return to the Material was beyond their individual capabilities. They needed to work together.

They would find a way to link Elyden with the Material, building a bridge that would span the heavens bringing the two worlds together, allowing them access to their ancestral home. From there they would be able to continue shaping as The Shaper had created them to do. Synchthonith and Nyarloth, with the assistance of Vorropohaiah, were the architects of this grand design, and Duruthilhotep and Rachanael provided their expertise with the entities of the Firmament and Atramenta.

To lay the foundations of the bridge the Demiurges needed the help of mortals versed in the ways of the Firmament and the Atramenta. As mortals, their link with Elyden was stronger than that of the Demiurges, and they were far more numerous, outnumbering the Two-and-Twenty many thousands to one. But, for whatever reason, the Demiurges chose not to tell their followers of their purpose. The mortals were to be workers in the Demiurges grand design, no more, no less. They would not be privy to designs or motives. Only when the deed was complete and the Demiurges would return to their past glory would all become clear to them.

For the first time since their creation, the mortal tribes (save the tribe of Talantehut, which had become pariahs) had truly united under one banner – that of the Demiurge Allaishada. Under her leadership, a great undertaking was begun. The Demiurges and their followers gathered around the base of Mount Sumeria and began construction of the Bridge of Eternities. Never before had an undertaking of such magnitude take place, and it dwarfed even the Demiurges Shaping of Elyden in its scope. Thousands times thousands of mortals worked, creating solid foundations for a structure the purpose of which they were blind to. They knew not what they done and yet they continued carrying out their overseers instructions as best they could. And so it went, up the chain of command, the desires of the Demiurges filtered down through foremen and overseers and managers, none of which knew any more than the what the rung directly above and below them revealed. Though they spoke the same language, mortal knew not what his brother mortal done or spoke. The unity of the Two-and-Twenty tribes had already begun to falter, and the seed of destruction had been sown in the soil of the Bridge of Eternities.

For all their unknowing, the work of the mortals satisfied the Demiurges, who concentrated on their own work.  Using the Firmament and the Atramenta as their material and their skill with sorcery and Atramentism as the tools, they would shape the aforementioned entities – the Firmament and the Atramenta – and bring them closer to Elyden, thus bringing the Material with them. The distance lessened, the Demiurges would construct a ‘bridge’ between one world and the other, and would use it to travel between Elyden and the Material. To those who felt the loss of The Shaper, the bridge would bring them closer to their Father. To those who desired to shape the Material as they once had, their time would come again.

A great ritual was begun by the Demiurges, and later maintained by their acolytes and followers. As the mortals held the Firmament and the Atramenta in place, the Demiurges began Shaping first Mount Sumeria, then Elyden herself, into a bridge to span the void between the two worlds.

It was not to be.

Arimaspi had been against the bridge from the start and met with Talantehut, who had retreated into obscurity following the conclave. They conferred in secret to thwart their sibling’s plans. Unbeknownst to the two rebellious Demiurges, their wishes were answered by The Shaper. Greatest of Divinities, the prophet of creation, Shaper of Shapers had but to think, and the dream of the Demiurges was destroyed before it had even begun. The lack of communication between architect and labourer had cursed the bridge since before the cornerstone had been placed. The foundations were weak, far too weak for the monumental weight placed atop them, and they crumbled.

The dream of the Demiurges was destroyed before completion.

The Shaper saw what the majority of his Children would have had done and knew it to be a false hope. With a thought, he brought the Firmament and the Atramenta back in place, shattering the work the Demiurges had done, breaking the minds of all the mortals forming a link in that ritual. In its anger, The Shaper altered the Firmament and Atramenta so that they could never again be used for such deeds. In finality it rebuked the desires of the Demiurges and punished them by removing their link with the Firmament and the Atramenta – Shapers of the Material they would remain, but the power of sorcery and creation would no longer be theirs to use. Forgotten and lost, the dream of the Onésimus and the Set, would be to them. To ensure that they did not defy its word ever again, The Shaper bestowed upon Talantehut the title of Keepers of Balance. She would be its Sentry upon Elyden, its will made flesh, its vengeance given form. Upon Arimaspi it bestowed the title King-of-Kings, and his was forevermore the will that Shaped Elyden. When next the Demiurges rose against the Shaper, these two siblings, first amongst equals, would be there to stop them before the need arose.

To the mortals, ignorant to the events they had just taken part in; The Shaper was lenient – only those who had thought it wise to manipulate and use the Firmament and Atramenta were punished. Their spirits were shorn from their vessels and placed in the dark Otherworld of the Atramenta as punishment for their misdeeds. Those left alive were spared as testament to The Shaper’s wisdom.

And on Malachai it bestowed the worst of curses; smiting him as an example to all those who would otherwise seek to forget the The Shaper. Malachai and his lands were cursed to forever be barren and without strength, ridding him of any influence he once had over the Material – a creator and Demiurge no more.

So it was that the dream of the Bridge of Eternities was ended

* * *

Uncounted thousands of mortals had died to The Shaper’s wrath, and their spirits travelled to the sky where they blotted out the stars. For a year and a day there was darkness throughout Elyden as the Atramenta grew strong. The bodies of the mortal races changed, and they no longer recognised one another, drifting across the changing face of the Island of Creation, which expanded ever outwards, creating a great sea, its shores far apart, disparate. This change of Elyden’s skin continues today, albeit at an increasingly slowed rate; the movement of continents unseen from year to year but changed over aeons.

In this time of darkness did the mortal tribes scatter throughout Elyden. Some remained close to the Island of Creation, along the shores of the Inner Sea that had once been the Sea of Chaos. Others spread far, travelling for decades upon decades until finally settling down. With their new distance, their languages grew disparate, corrupted until they could no longer understand each other. The tribes had scattered, and with their diffusion had ended the time of unity. Where once the Two-and-Twenty tribes had lived together on the Island of Creation, they were now separate entities, with their own lands, their own tongues, their own appearance, their own customs. Elyden was one world, but she was not home to one people.

The Demiurges, like their tribes, grew more distant than ever before, and they scattered throughout the new lands of the Island of Creation; Elyden as we know her today.

With the space to grow and develop renewed, the tribes continued with their lives. They built great cities the likes of which had never before been constructed. They wrote epics that mirrored the great tale that unfolded in the world. They pondered questions to which no mortals could ever know the answers. They cultivated the land, raising crops and leading herds. They harvested the skin of Elyden and tamed her beasts until they were the masters of all they surveyed.

With their mastery over life and Elyden, the Two-and-Twenty tribes grew and shrank with the times. Seven remained along the shores of the Inner Sea, looking lustfully inwards towards what remained of the fabled Island of Creation, that was out of reach to all but their dreams. Seven headed west and spread throughout those lands and Seven spread east and south.

And so, Elyden’s skin came to be the way it is now and the mortal tribes came to be scattered throughout the surface.

Part 6