Rebirth of the Dragon
11 Ahm is all, and all that’s made and unmade.
Ahm is body and The One the spirit.
The spirit of The One shall have a mind.
The mind-eye of The One is known as Vê.
11-1 Legion are the eyes within Ahm’s members,
And through these eyes, The One envisions Ahm.
But there is just one eye of higher sight,
And Vê shall be the consciousness of Ahm.
12 Vê shall be unmade and made forever.
Her oceans swell and then recede, again.
As heavens turn from west unto the east,
She is eternal in her ebbs and flows.
12-1 And just as dawn precedeth azure dusk,
And as each dusk precedeth golden dawn,
Everything that’s made shall yet be unmade,
And all that is unmade is made again.
12-2 Vê is remade from her molten cinders.
Her mountains shall be ceased from vulcan rage.
Her seas shall be distilled from mist and cloud.
Her poisons shall be cleansed by driving rains.
13 The purpose of The One is knowing Ahm,
For that which can be seen can yet be known.
The One perceiveth Ahm through living eyes.
To chosen life, The One gives higher sight.
13-1 Vê is remade from unmaking ruin.
Her ocean spawns the coming of all life.
The essence reconceives the ancient forms.
Waters teem again with motile creatures.
13-2 The sea of gold reflects the blazing Sol.
Tempests howl and churn the deepest trenches.
Waves that crest in silver break the shoreline.
Within this maelstrom, churns the soul of Vê.
13-3 From still pools infused with living essence,
The lower forms take root upon the land.
Guided by The One, the lowlands seeded,
The flora from lost ages are reborn.
13-4 Vale is remade from its prior ruin.
The air is cooled and skies are purified.
Flora turns the valleys into gardens
Which veil the surface shimmering of glass.
13-5 The flora weaves their tapestry of life.
Ferns and fruited brambles clothe the valleys.
Majestic trees climb high above the mist—
Their manna suckled by the creeping vines.
13-6 Unrooted lifeforms venture from the sea,
And land shall dance by motile creature din.
From sea to pool to stalk to treetop height—
An ornamented song of plume and call.
13-7 Trees shall nurture rise of flying creatures,
Aloof from claw, and fang, and snaring vine.
Of these beasts are born lords of predation,
Harvesting their feasts with silent cunning.
13-8 Those bound unto the floor forever fear,
The golden skies traversed by flying beasts.
They each know an end comes without warning—
Their last vision, rising into heaven.
13-9 Avians, in time, will then be mastered—
A member of their phylum reign supreme.
Sailing skies on wings that block the Sol-light,
With gnashing fangs that cleave both flesh and bone.
13-10 What grim curse restoreth these foul creatures?
For they could not be of the mind of Ahm.
It is sin denying terror’s maker,
For wyvern are but reapers of The One.
13-11 They know not mercy, sorrow, nor regret.
They know not hatred, envy, or to love.
They are hunters driven by their impulse,
Killing for their feast and for desire.
13-12 Wyvern lord on Vê ten million annum,
Ripping organs loose from fated creatures.
They nest upon cathedral vulcan glass,
And were the highest seers of The One.
13-13 Vision grants the seer its perception,
Perceptions are oft’ clouded by mind’s hem.
And though the wyvern sees the realm of Vê,
The One desires higher understanding.
13-14 The One shall maketh Sol to dim her light,
And day becomes an endless amber glow.
The rain of heaven poureth down on Vê
Whilst radiance of Sol remains subdued.
13-15 Rain of heaven alters living essence,
And wyvern species birth a higher brood.
The One give nourishment unto the chosen,
And they are gifted with the highest minds.
13-16 Vê gives no quarter to the frail or lame.
Weakened beasts shall never find a mercy.
And so, the wyvern too shall meet their ends,
For all that has been made shall be unmade.
14 Overlords emerge from wyvern breeding,
And these are ones imbued with higher minds.
From their visions, they glean understanding.
For this, The One reveres them like a child.
14-1 The first awakening in high perception—
The wyvern that attempts to rise to Sol.
Higher it shall climb pursuing knowing,
Above the golden mist that sheaths the realm.
14-2 Higher yet it rises to the heavens,
Until the beaming Sol shall blind its eyes.
Higher still it rises to the ether,
Until its wings no longer fill with air.
14-3 Heaven is beyond the pilgrim’s grasping,
Yet it struggles upward in pursuing.
Alas, it takes its final gasping breath,
And after doing, falls back to the world.
14-4 The folded wyvern spins down into Vê,
A silent form descending through the mist.
Its fall is broken by frondescent floor,
The lifeless body shattered and deceased.
14-5 Cradled in a womb of vibrant blossoms,
The mutilated, fallen wyvern lies.
Its shattered, broken bones impale its flesh,
Its bursted entrails spoil fair bouquets.
14-6 Prowling beasts approach the broken carcass,
Intending to devour flesh and bone.
A sepulcher of thorns preserves the dead,
And frenzied feast of famished beast is stayed.
14-7 The One sees every rising and descent,
For it sees through the eyes of all that lives.
The One, alone, infuses flesh with life,
And that which is unmade shall be remade.
14-8 By The One the wyvern lies in stasis,
Impervious to fang and boring worm.
By The One, the tendrils are awakened,
To gather lifeless serpent in embrace.
14-9 The vines take hold and set the broken bones,
And viscera are in this way restored.
A million arthropods are made to toil,
Stitching wounds and mending ruptured vessels.
14-10 Shielded from devouring beast and flora,
The One guides labors of the root and mind,
And in this manner, healing fallen wyrm,
Throughout the turning of one Vallis day.
14-11 And when the wyvern’s body is remade,
The One commands the heart to beat again.
The lungs draw breath, the opened eyes shall see,
And thus, the dragon race reborn on Vê.
14-12 Nezulim shall be the name of dragons.
The first of Nezulim is Margathon.
With cunning and ferocity, it hunts,
To cull the creatures of the valley floor.
14-13 The Nezulim are each rebirthed from wyrm.
And they will number thousands at their height.
Most shall not survive a thousand annum,
Those that do shall have extended lifespan.
15 In dragon veins, the blood runs cold and black.
Their souls unhindered by benevolence.
Their minds perceive with every seeing eye.
The Nezulim inherit all of Vê.
15-1 Two hundred forty-four survive the age.
The One has gifted these extended life.
But quorum shall demand four times their count,
And so, they fix their will to build their race.
15-2 Nezulim cannot breed new descendants—
Essence of the quickened dead is poison.
To propagate their kind, they must give alms—
A wyvern sacrificed to be reborn.
15-3 The wyvern are pursued by Nezulim,
And many are brought down from vulcan heights.
The hunt brings horror of the tearing flesh,
And many Nezulim are killed and maimed.
15-4 On vulcan spires piercing valley mist,
Wyrm of Vê surveils the swirling vapors.
Dragons lurk in silence, setting ambush,
To burst in wails and gnashing fang and claw.
15-5 No wyvern shall be taken without fray.
What they lack in mind they have in frenzy.
The more tenacious be their culling stand,
Greater be their honor in remaking.
15-6 In time, the hunt will yield the quorum count,
Though it be filled at Vê’s tremendous cost.
Ripped from perches high above the valley,
Wyvern shall be made the rarest species.
16 The Nezulim set minds to building Vê.
They birth the race of Raptors for their toil.
Garden Vallis blooms in unmatched splendor,
With each living form awaiting harvest.
16-1 The burdens of the Nezulim are borne
By every lower caste of living form.
They burrow, build, and toil without rest,
To manifest the will of Nezulim.
16-2 Atop these castes, the serpent Raptor race,
Contrived of ancient essence disinterred.
Partly wyvern, partly race ill-fated,
They are born to suffer labor’s hardship.
16-3 Margathon directs them in their toil,
And those that won’t be slaves shall be consumed.
Vê is thusly made into oasis,
Its bounty multiplied a thousand-fold.
16-4 Deep, the Raptors dig with pick and hammer,
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Alas, they find an ancient lucent vein.
Margathon descends down to the chamber
Where its mind is there enjoined to vision.
16-5 This deep chamber, green with luminescence,
Has many windows opened into time.
The mind of Margathon sees futures past,
Where that which was unmade is made again.
16-6 Margathon envisions Their emergence:
They who are unwinged and stand two-footed,
They who multiply descendant legions,
They who are short-lived and fear their dying.
16-7 Margathon perceives Their domination:
They whose ears hear naught, whose eyes are blinded,
They who are corrupted by Their manias—
Deaf and blind yet thriving through Their madness.
16-8 They are builders of fantastic engines,
Machines extending will of driven minds,
Machines that shall subdue entire worlds,
They, the wielders of the dragon shackles.
16-9 Margathon envisions far dominions,
These be realms beyond the dragon’s reaching.
No Nezulim shall be their overlords,
For these far realms shall be subdued by Them.
16-10 Nearest of these realms is known as Ed?,
A realm of ice surrendering to life,
Sprawling seas surrounded by an ice-wall,
Lands of forest driving back the glaciers.
16-11 In Ed?’s depths there is an ancient crypt,
Warmed by boiling vulcan tempest heat.
Therein lies nine Nezulim in stasis,
Wasting in their arks of gold and crystal.
16-12 Me? is the other distant domain.
It too is seeded by The One’s command.
Volcanoes of this realm are godlike sacred,
For they are heartbeats of this bitter world.
16-13 Buried deep within the depths of Me?,
They build a keep impervious to siege—
A crucible that burns the heat of Sol.
In this hold, all things are torn asunder.
16-14 Though They have no wings, the heavens beckon,
Though They have no gills, the oceans summon,
Though They have no scales, no flame repeleth.
From Their pyres, They bring domination.
16-15 Margathon’s perception brings foreboding.
Blazing bolide falling from the heavens,
Then, the Vallis gardens rot and wither,
Last, the culling of the final wyvern.
16-16 With this vision, Margathon dispatches
A coterie of loyal Nezulim—
All rapacious hunter-slayer dragons—
The seven killers bound to dragon king.
16-17 Seven are renowned as Varangean.
And Bazunan is named their doyen lord.
Margathon holds this one in the highest.
For it is cunning in its killing art.
16-18 Bazunan is blackest of all dragons.
Scarred in many cullings of the wyvern.
Its scales are calloused rings like alloy mail.
Its fangs evoke black shards of vulcan glass.
16-19 Margathon commands these hunter-slayers:
Be killers loosed upon the Raptor slaves.
The ones that found the luminescent vein
Must not be permitted to reveal it.
16-20 Hunt them in their rest and while they labor,
And each of their relations they have known.
Every trace of flesh and bone devour.
The prophecy of Them must be concealed!
17 Nezulim are lords of Garden Vallis.
By Raptor’s labor, dragon’s will prevails.
All shall come to worship them as godly,
While Margathon conceals their pending doom.
17-1 Seeing eye is given to the dragon,
The One uncovers all the eyes of Vê.
Nezulim prevail without a hunger,
Ten thousand annum span this golden age.
18 Yet the Nezulim foment their envies,
Their avarice consumes their sated flesh.
And by this, their waning shall be seeded,
For as their kind shall rise, they too shall fall.
18-1 The body that must struggle for survival
Nurtureth a soul of righteous purpose.
The body that is without any want
Nurtureth a soul that seeks its ruin.
18-2 Bounty of all Vallis brings the ruin,
And by this curse the Nezulim shall fall.
Doom besets the race without its honor.
The cult of death supplants the honor-void.
18-3 They say that what be virtue and be vice
Shall be determined by the flaying whip.
Others say that virtue is determined
By that which nurtures and that which destroys.
18-4 Yet, conundrum of this question lingers,
For what if nurture cometh from the flay?
By this reason, evil is so rooted,
And by this riddle, Nezulim destroyed.
18-5 Vê’s most virtuous, the Raptor servants—
United by their bonded, finite life.
They will neither thieve nor slay their brethren,
For this would bring no respite from their toil.
18-6 Least of all in virtue is the dragon,
For they are curs-ed with immortal life.
Spending eras in a garden bounty,
Their minds become consumed with avarice.
18-7 In realms of manna falling from the trees,
Sated flesh shall turn to other hungers.
A host of new inequities contrived—
Eradicated only by the cull.
18-8 Regardless of the splendor of the realm,
There always shall be found inequity.
One hath more and one hath less by measures,
And only one is cursed with future sight.
18-9 Ogrennon shall be next of Nezulim,
Vaunting in the eon of Vê’s splendor,
Second only to the eldest dragon,
Transfigured from the greatest wyvern known.
18-10 Bazunan presides upon the culling,
And takes Ogrennon’s wyvern from its spire.
But wyrms are violent in their dying throes.
Bazunan’s right eye is lost by flaying.
18-11 Turned to dragon, deep in glowing caverns,
Ogrennon shall become the beast most fair.
Having blinded doyen lord in culling,
Ogrennon is regarded with renown.
18-12 Ogrennon never knows of want or lust,
Save for the want of knowing future’s path.
Margathon withholds the future vision,
Ogrennon is aggrieved by this rebuff.
18-13 Ogrennon is increasingly revered
Cursing Margathon for this withholding.
No curse shall go unanswered by the beast,
And every curse shall be replied two-fold.
18-14 Every cut shall be made right by gashing,
Each broken forelimb by a fractured leg,
And each eye that’s lost repaid with blinding,
For violence is the means to its own end.
18-15 The camp of Margathon shall not concede,
Nor shall camp Ogrennon cease their clamor.
As neither pride nor lust shall be subdued,
Nezulim shall turn upon each other.
19 The fall is nurtured in a womb of strife.
Sol will dim with every annum daybreak.
The cloudless sky is etched with lightning flash.
Mountain walls of Vê begin to tremble.
19-1 Margathon shall rage at this rebellion.
Abundance is consumed in envy’s pyre.
Margathon laments as mountains rumble,
‘How can the last awoken be their king?’
19-2 Ogrennon gathers loyals in the heights.
Half of every Nezulim assemble.
They pledge their oaths on honor bound by life.
The war of Nezulim is thus declared.
19-3 Ogrennon’s host descends on garden vale,
And Margathon is driven from the light.
The dragons siege the elder’s labyrinth,
And Margathon then must capitulate.
19-4 Margathon accedes to end the tumult
By rumors spread that future shall be shown:
Nezulim shall see the future vision,
But Margathon yet holds the seeing stone.
19-5 Ogrennon comes into the elder’s crypt.
Where the vein of knowing was defended.
Ogrennon joins its mind unto the stone,
And sacred crystal shares the future’s course.
19-6 Sacred knowledge breathes into Ogrennon—
The vision of the future takes ahold.
At the very moment of the gnosis,
The doyen Bazunan carves out its eyes.
19-7 Blind Ogrennon thrashes in its darkness,
Yet it holds within its mind a vision:
From vulcan depths of Ed?’s ancient keep,
Shall come the dragon that has been cast down.
19-8 The Varangean gather on the beast
To prevent escape into rebellion.
Margathon subdues the blind Ogrennon,
And drives the dragon off the chasm ledge.
19-9 A passing Nezulim must be replaced
To maintain the quorum of their order.
Ogrennon is regarded as deceased.
Gronde will be the name of its successor.
20 Margathon stokes Nezulim with terrors.
The dragons descend deep into their holds.
Needing counsel from the demon seer,
The dragon lord shall seek Azarius.
The “Mind-eye” is the physical concentration of perception necessary to yield consciousness. Thus, Vé is the physical place where the consciousness of The One resides.
Vulcan: Volcanic.
“Higher sight”: Implies higher levels of perception and consciousness.
“Essence”: The basis or design or spirit of God inherent in and unique to all living things.
“Landscapes shimmering of glass”: Refers to the surface magma of Vé that has cooled into obsidian glass.
“Flying beasts” or “Avians” are winged, predatory reptiles that evolved on Vé. They are the predecessors to dragons.
Wyvern: The apex creature dominant on Vé prior to the transfiguration of the Nezulim. They are massive, carnivorous, winged reptiles of high intelligence. They live largely solitary lives, building perches high in obsidian spires, above even the majestic treetops. Also known as “wyrm” or “oorm.”
Annum: A solar year. In the realm of Vé, this is the time equivalent of half a year in Ed? and one quarter of a year in Me?. An annum in Vé is the same timespan as a solar day in Vé. For men who belong to the Faith of The One, Ed?’s winter solstice marks the symbolic sunrise over Vé, and summer solstice marks the sunset.
“Rain of heaven”: The era of species evolution coinciding with a quieted Sol and long periods of precipitation and cooler temperatures.
“Overlords”: The mutated sub-species of wyvern imbued with higher consciousness.
“Understanding”: Used here means consciousness.
Wyrm: another term for wyvern or oorm or dragon.
The Nezulim: The species of dragon, or the wyvern (or wyrm or oorm) remade through death by The One as materially immortal, transcendent, and divine. They are blessed with the shared vision of all the Vallis life within their proximity. This higher vision provides them with extra-dimensional perception and affords them extraordinary intelligence. They do not change shape or form, per se, but can alter how they are perceived by beings in the lower dimension. It is not possible for creatures in our plane of existence to perceive them in their entirety as they are spatially extradimensional. What we perceive of them would be akin to seeing only the shadow cast by an object— a picture of or understanding that is incomplete and limited. They often appear to humans as horrific winged serpents, but also as human reflections, or as long dead kings or old witches. Many religions regard the Nezulim as the manifestation of evil, or as simply: “the beast.”
Margathon: The first of the dragon to be transfigured, or reborn from death.
Quorum: The number of Nezulim needed to ensure the mandate of their lord. Without it, the dragon lord is regarded as illegitimate and is vulnerable to challenge.
The “serpent Raptor race” or Raptors: Also known as Nephilim. They are made from the essence of wyvern and the “race ill-fated.”
“Their” or “They” or “Them”: Those that shall come to enslave and exploit the Nezulim.
Ed?: The middle realm of men, where they achieve the height of their power and dishonor. A world of deep oceans and rivers and lakes. Largely forested, yet essentially too barren and too cold for dominance by the descendant species of Vé.
Me?: The third realm of men before they are cast out into the void. It is a world of divine volcanos and shallow seas. Arid and cool and windy, its lands are swarths of gently rolling steppe and jagged, jutted badlands. There are no trees, only oceans of grass and oases choked by brambles. In their epilogue era, Men have built great cities, here, and connected them with causeways.
Varangean: A host of seven of the most ruthless hunter-slayers forever bound to their doyen (commander).
Bazunan: The most cunning and ruthless hunter-slayer, doyen of the dragon Varangean, and highest servant of Margathon.
Vallis: The sacred garden of Vé and the lair of the Nezulim. The host of all life there, it weaves for tens of thousands of square miles throughout the lowlands, ravines, and gorges of remade Vé.
“Seeing eye”: The ability of Nezulim to perceive through the senses and perception of all adjacent living things. This ability is greatly diminished away from Vé.
Gronde: The dragon that replaces Ogrennon. The last Nezulim to be transfigured before The Waning.
Azarius: The immortal prophet. Regarded as a demon seer by the Nezulim, divine by the Raptors, and as both by men.
