He Awakens
21 Azarius awaits the Nezulim.
Quietly, He bides his time in darkness,
In repose, in eons-lasting dream state.
The dragon comes for Him a thousand times.
21-1 Submersed within an utter, senseless dark,
Drowned within a din of total silence,
Neither hot nor cold, and without movement,
Oblivion enveloping the flesh.
21-2 Azarius awaits within this crypt,
Sustained in life by manna of The One.
Eons pass as if but merely moments.
Madness is annulled by dreaming journeys.
21-3 His memory is of the futures past,
So too, He shall recall the pasts to come.
Every moment of His countless lifetimes
Is relived while in the state of dreaming.
21-4 He recalls the souls of each encountered,
The kings, and paupers, mothers, soldiers, babes.
Friend reborn a foe and foe re-friended,
For no man lives their life the same way twice.
21-5 He does not recall embrace by mother,
Nor does He recall a father’s lessons.
No memory of childhood exists,
Begotten by The One, and never young.
22 Warm blood doth pulse within His ageless veins.
Wounds will bleed, and blows will bruise and break Him.
Though He be slain by blade, or club, or knot,
Rooted and unrooted life renews Him.
22-1 He has dreamt of cities built by menfolk.
Its narrow alleys bustle with exchange.
Labyrinths of stone, and flesh, and clamor,
And odors, tastes, and the echoes in the air.
22-2 He has been here countless times in history.
Each visit finds it more-or-less the same.
Masons stack the stones in likewise patterns,
The routes arranged familiar in design.
22-3 Every time He recognizes faces,
And most replay the same roles as before.
Brute gendarmes shall only change their masters,
And beggars rarely stack the merchant’s coin.
22-4 The patrician class are clad in colors,
The filthy proles will shout, and spit, and curse.
Men with violent stares in breasted bronze-plates
Are prodding Him with sharpened blades of steel.
22-5 Thirteen times He’s marched this raucous gauntlet,
Which culminates within a dungeon keep.
Scourging of the flesh is their cruel manner,
Then meted death for crimes of heresy.
22-6 One cannot confront a mob with reason,
Devotion to the mob, its only law.
Ultimate of sin to all fanatics
Is by the mockery of their righteous cause.
22-7 Every man shall bear religious fervor,
Each worships god, or ghost, or king, or cause.
Stand athwart the mob and ye be trampled.
Defying divine law a heresy.
23 His emergence is the foretold omen,
It shall concur with tumult throughout Vê.
Though The Waning Era comes before Him,
The prophecy of Him is thus fulfilled.
23-1 In the time before The Waning Era,
Vê’s garden bounty sated every want.
Margathon recalls the future vision.
Banished devils should not be forgotten.
23-2 Margathon surrenders to the caverns.
The serpent’s body withers in its crypt.
Wasting lords oblige the hunt for devils,
The Varangean set out on their hunt.
23-3 The wyvern hunt will span a hundred sols,
Yet not one eye of Vê will glimpse the wyrm.
The Varangean search the highland plains
Where the heat of Sol burns like a furnace.
23-4 The hunters reach the Highlands of Keveer—
Lifeless rocks emblazoned by Sol’s fire.
Naked under Sol, they seek shade’s refuge,
And find His crypt within a deep crevasse.
23-5 The Varangean souls are filled with dread,
For the prophet shall abet The Waning.
Varangean huddle in the shadows,
In fear of He who heralds in their doom.
23-6 Bazunan berates them all as cowards,
And threatens to remove their head from spine.
By claw and fang, the dragons pry the door.
There within, Azarius is waiting.
23-7 Bazunan creeps forth to vet the prophet.
Its forked black tongue flicks at the petty being.
Slaying it would bring it exaltation,
And glory would be given to the beast.
23-8 But He awakens just before the strike.
Nezulim recoil in their terror.
He speaks to them, ‘Before you cut me down…’
‘Know that I can lead you to the wyvern.’
23-9 Bazunan’s first instinct is to slay Him,
But Varangean halt the killing strike.
Bazunan hurls curses at their thwarting,
While dragons circle in defense of man.
23-10 They speak to Him with voices in his mind,
Their intonements chanted in His whisper.
But He has heard the dragon’s voice before,
And their writhing tone cannot corrupt Him.
23-11 The Nezulim do not remember Him.
Their eyes then narrow as He thwarts their spell.
Poison odors burn into His airways…
‘Spare your suffering! Tell us of the wyvern!’
23-12 Forked tongues glazed with acid flick His body.
Azarius replies with weakened voice:
‘You cannot find the wyvern by Vê’s sight.’
‘This wyvern has eluded Vallis eyes.’
23-13 Dragons scrape His flesh with serpent armor.
Azarius continues without fear:
‘The One withholds your higher dragon sight.’
‘As Sol reddens, so your vision darkens.’
23-14 But still, they have no memory of this man.
‘Liar! Demon! You cannot deceive us!’
They try to break his mind with fear of pain.
‘Spare your suffering! Tell us of the wyvern!’
23-15 In His mind he sees His burning body,
Then He feels the immolation fires…
‘There is no use in torturing my mind!’
‘For all you might impose, I have endured.’
23-16 ‘Listen to my words for your salvation.’
‘The wyvern’s lair lies just beyond your sight.’
‘I shall give the wyvern on your promise,’
‘That I may pick the manner of my death.’
23-17 Bazunan reacts with rage and fury.
‘A man shall never bargain with the beast!’
‘I shall cast you down into the chasm,’
‘Spare your suffering! Tell us of the wyvern!’
23-18 Azarius refuses to concede,
And drives the fire from his ancient mind.
‘Living flesh can never be immortal,’
‘All that is remade shall yet be unmade.’
23-19 ‘So many times, I’ve known you, Bazunan,’
‘But you do not recall your prior lives.’
‘Holy is the place of your life’s ending,’
‘Where your mind is freed from body’s bondage.’
23-20 ‘The fool denies the coming of the night,’
‘Thus his path is foiled by the darkness.’
‘The wise prepare their lanterns in the day,’
‘Thus the nightfall won’t impede their journey.’
23-21 ‘I can light the lantern of salvation’
‘And give to you the wyrm who will be lord.’
‘Squander this and ye shall face your ruin,’
‘And left to gnaw upon each other’s bones.’
23-22 The Nezulim grow wary of His words,
For they have learned The Waning prophecy:
‘He shall come and bring the flame of end times.’
‘Nezulim shall suffer by this fire!’
23-23 They then turn their claws upon His body,
And He is slashed, and bruised, and broken-boned.
Then He’s carried off to Vallis garden,
Where Margathon shall mete the prophet’s fate.
23-24 The prophet is brought down to dragon’s crypt,
Where Azarius is forced to prostrate.
Varangean gather round the prophet,
And darkness fills with sounds of grinding scales.
23-25 Glow illuminates a human visage:
A man upon a throne in gilded robes.
A voice emerges from the grating din…
‘Tell me prophet, do you recognize me?’
23-26 He hears their black blood rushing through their veins,
And their claws that scrape like stone on iron.
He gathers himself up so He may speak.
‘You are the lord of dragons, Margathon.’
23-27 Varangean beasts then ooze and slither.
The visage king responds in troubled tone.
‘Why do describe a man as dragon?’
‘Am I not man as your eyes have perceived?’
23-28 ‘My eyes see that which dragons have revealed.’
‘You project a man into my vision,’
‘For you believe it will disarm my mind,’
‘But you have forgotten past encounters.’
23-29 The visage king arises from his throne.
‘I have seen you in the future’s vision,’
‘Where you precede destruction of this realm.’
‘Bringeth you the fire or mere warning?’
23-30 ‘I bring nothing but word of the weather.’
‘My death will not forestall the burning Sol.’
‘Yes, this garden will be rendered cinders,’
‘And few of Nezulim will carry on.’
23-31 The visage king lays hands upon His head,
Thus Azarius receives the binding.
Then Margathon demands the dragons leave.
They withdraw by slithers into darkness.
23-32 Margathon enjoins the mind of prophet.
‘What will you tell me of The Waning time?’
Margathon awaits the prophet’s answer
While veins of stone suffuse in emerald glow.
23-33 Silently, He tends his wounded body,
His quiet, driving visage king to wrath.
‘You shall answer, specter of unholy!’
And only then Azarius responds.
23-34 ‘I’ll not yet share your waning destiny,’
‘But, I will reveal to you the wyvern.’
‘It nests upon the pinnacle of Yune.’
‘Hasten and it can be brought to Vallis.’
23-35 ‘But also, you must know of this great wyrm,’
‘It cannot be deceived by dragon’s drone.’
‘Varangean will be firmly tested;’
‘Seven of them may not match its fury.’
23-36 ‘Know that if you lose a Varangean,’
‘Fate is sealed by lack of quorum number.’
‘Once this wyvern turns, your future ceases,
‘For this one is the last of wyvern-kind.’
23-37 ‘You must now fulfill what was agreed to.’
‘For I have upheld my end of the pledge.’
‘Your doyen brought me here upon its oath.’
‘All betrayals bring the curse of justice.’
23-38 The visage king withdraws from prophet’s mind,
For Margathon has learned the wyvern perch.
‘Tell me prophet, what shall be your preference?’
‘What be the manner by which ye be slain?’
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23-39 Smoldering engulfs its scales with aura.
The fangs and claws reflect the ember glows.
Azarius corrals His waning strength,
As the visage king becomes the dragon.
23-40 ‘Margathon shall bear the dragon’s honor.’
‘The manner of my slaying shall be thus:’
‘Willingly, I sacrifice my body.’
‘But only to the lord of Nezulim.’
23-41 Margathon appears in all its horror,
The serpent swells within in the cavern keep.
Azarius is swallowed by the beast,
Dragon lord then calls the Varangean.
24 Future shall be past and past the future,
And memory shall be a prophecy.
Nezulim will quell the doomsday prophet,
But harbingers are not the source of doom.
24-1 Varangean dispatch for the wyvern,
Embarking for the pinnacle of Yune.
Vulcan glass that spires from the highlands,
It rises high above the eyes of Vê.
24-2 Varangean hunters reach the mountain,
By hidden murmuration in the mist.
Hiding in the shadows of Yune’s fractures,
Setting ambush for their wyvern prey.
24-3 Restlessly, they vilify the prophet,
Intoning curses in the silent dark,
While time is lengthened by the spell of night,
Under firmament of dancing pyres.
24-4 The wyvern comes, descending in the dark,
Landing on its perch atop the spire.
The hunters hold for Ed?’s climbing star,
Signaling the moment of their ambush.
24-5 The beryl cinder rises in the west,
Marking moment of unleashing fury.
The Varangean dispatch from their blinds,
Rising to ensnare their serpent trophy.
24-6 The method of the capture is by swarm.
For wyvern are a cunning, violent beast.
Varangean come from every vantage,
Slashing, clawing, flaying at the creature.
24-7 Their doyen, Bazunan, goes for the cull,
But the cunning wyvern counter-slashes.
Unseen by blinded eye, the razor tail
Slices down above the doyen’s shoulder.
24-8 The dragon’s skull is severed from the spine,
And serpent jaws cry out a silent shriek.
Tumbling down and down into the garden,
Doyen’s eye reveals a final terror.
24-9 The dragon’s headless body flails and writhes,
Crashing down from heaven’s misty currents.
The heart yet pumping fountains of black blood,
Vulcan glass and dragon scales are splattered.
24-10 The body of the doyen comes to rest.
Quickly, forest hunters come to gather.
They tear the flesh from bone in frenzied feast.
Bazunan the dragon sates their hunger.
24-11 The wyvern shall be finally subdued,
By the force of Varangean numbers.
The beast is lowered from the mountain’s peak,
Borne by them unto their master’s cavern.
24-12 In deep’ning depths, the trial is imposed—
Torture beyond human comprehension.
The veins are ruptured and the blood is let,
Until wyvern’s final heartbeat pulses.
24-13 The wyvern body’s lain on garden floor.
Rooted and unrooted then beset it,
The lesser beings transfigure lifeless corpse,
By this, the wyrm is made into a god.
24-14 Sol rises over Vê each annum turn,
But this dawn shall be marked by one rebirth.
The last of Nezulim shall take a breath.
All that lives shall herald: Gronde the dragon!
25 Margathon lies waiting in the darkness,
Until the tomb is opened to the light.
The Nezulim forsake their dragon lord,
In the depths where Sol cannot envigor.
25-1 Gronde’s making does not fill the quorum count—
Headless Bazunan, the missing number.
Thus, mandate of the elder master ends.
Nezulim must elevate another.
25-2 Gronde is nurtured in the ways and meanings,
Evolving with the highest seeing eye.
This high vision shall not be encumbered;
The wise must shun devotion to all rites.
25-3 Future’s end is marked by wyvern’s passing,
And Gronde’s arising in the Nezulim.
Final ages shall be filled with tumult,
As end time lords cast off their elder’s ways.
25-4 The Nezulim shall segregate in clans,
And no voice of reason can repair this.
For Nezulim regard themselves as gods—
Blasphemy and envy, their undoing.
25-5 The tribe of Margathon defends their lord.
Followers of Gronde condemn the elder.
The elders promise Vallis can be saved.
Margathon perpetuates this falsehood.
25-6 The highlands stir and groan, and crack, and burn.
The firmament becomes a shroud of soot.
Molten stone bursts forth from mountain fissures.
Vê convulses in the war of dragons.
25-7 In desperation, Margathon will act.
Slithering its way up to the surface,
Calling out for Varangean servants,
Weakened by the darkness of the caverns.
25-8 The Varangean come when they are called.
Lord of dragons orders Gronde devoured.
But Varangean shall betray their oath,
Turning fang and claw upon their master.
25-9 Margathon is driven into daylight,
Where Nezulim are gathered to exalt.
Gronde shall be anointed as their master,
And Nezulim await their first command.
25-9 One hundred thousand annum spanned the reign.
O’er this era, Vallis reached full glory.
Though Margathon’s ascendence was the cause,
Nothing rising shall escape its falling.
25-10 What shall command the lord of Nezulim?
Gronde decrees a sacrifice to Vallis.
Forthright, old Margathon shall be destroyed,
The body opened to the air of Vê.
25-11 Margathon is held upon the altar.
The Varangean gather ‘round their lord.
Gronde releases them upon the elder,
To tear the organs loose from waning beast.
25-12 But terror fills the minds of gathered beings.
Sectioned entrails writhe in oozing piles.
The membrane is incised by tearing claws,
Where a living man escapes the vellum.
25-13 Coated in the ooze of dragon’s cruor,
Naked as an infant after birthing.
‘And who could be this man?’ the dragons ask.
But Varangean know… Azarius!
26 Gronde shall lord from deep within the chasms.
Its scales will harden into iron shields.
Serpent’s body grows too large to surface,
But though the eyes go blind, the sight is keen.
26-1 One millennium with Gronde brings respite.
The molten vulcan furnace is subdued,
As the feuding conflict is abated.
The era of new lord delays their end.
26-2 But Nezulim will know the end yet comes,
When their garden shall be turned to cinders.
For, the wage of decadence is waning,
And curse of envy shall be wrought by flame.
26-3 The minds of Nezulim are filled with angst.
Vallis echoes with their lamentations:
‘What is the crime by which we shall be judged?’
‘Have we not brought the gardens to the waste?’
26-4 Gronde answers them by voice inside their minds:
‘Though we have been given garden splendor,’
‘We have murdered in our greed and envy.’
‘For this, we are convicted by The One.’
26-5 But Gronde cannot repress their troubled souls—
Nezulim persist in their denial.
‘Is not The One’s will for the sowing life?’
‘Why this judgement if life comes by reaping?’
26-6 Gronde rebukes the Nezulim in voices.
The droning in their minds brings them to heel.
‘Ye are bless-ed by The One’s divining,’
‘But ye have brought the discord into Vê.’
26-7 ‘Living are the beings that share the reaping.’
‘The reaper harvests for the rites of life.’
‘Killers are the beings that slay by envy.’
‘The killer murders for the cult of death.’
26-8 ‘That which Margathon withheld from knowing’
‘Shall be the fate of dragon Nezulim.’
‘By thy sin, we shall be cast from Vallis,’
‘As splendid garden turneth into ash.’
26-9 They ask, ‘Has not The One made Vê its eye?’
So Gronde replies, ‘There is no doubt Vê is…’
‘But, if thine eye brings the spirit discord,’
‘Ye shall blind it by the flame of judgement.’
26-10 ‘When shall this doom befall us?’ They reply.
Gronde says: ‘This perception is beyond me,’
‘Though, there is one who knows the very hour—’
‘This one also knows the path from ruin.’
26-11 ‘Who is this one?’ The Nezulim demand.
‘It is He who emerged from the entrails,
‘He who is immortal in his body.’
‘The man who has eternal memory,’
26-12 The Nezulim demand to know time’s end.
‘Bring this man to us so we may sway Him.’
‘We’ll slowly break His body and His mind.’
‘We will make Him tell us of our end day.’
26-13 Gronde rebukes them for their wretched scheming:
‘One cannot reveal the truth by torture,’
‘For men will lie to spare themselves from pain,’
‘And they know the truth will bring no mercy.’
26-14 Gronde remains within the Vallis dungeon,
As keeper of the prophet who yet sleeps.
The dragon guards the man who knows the way.
For He alone can save the Nezulim.
26-15 For one thousand annum they are bonded,
Entombed within the darkness under Vê.
High above, the dragons feast on bounty,
Forgetting of the man who knows their doom.
27 When the time has come the prophet wakens.
Azarius shall open long-closed eyes,
Finding He is not alone in darkness.
Gronde is there, in visage of ascetic.
27-1 The withered man is lit in emerald glow,
Seated in the same pose as the prophet.
His beard is long and drapes his hide-like skin.
Gronde reveals himself as His reflection.
27-2 The prophet chides the dragon for his ploy:
‘You forget that men mature with wisdom.’
‘You must know that my time is eternal,’
‘And age inures men from implanted thoughts.’
27-3 The ascetic asks with lips unmoving,
‘Now that you have arisen from your dream,’
‘Tell me of the hour of Vê’s ruin,’
‘So that we might prepare for end of days.’
27-4 He replies, ‘Your schemes shall be made futile,’
‘The One’s unmaking shall not be denied.’
‘Many trials will beset the dragon,’
‘Numbers must be culled before the journey.’
27-5 ‘Do not worry of the preparation,’
‘For I must only show your kind the way.’
‘Keep me here so that I stay forgotten,’
‘And I’ll reveal the ruin on its eve.’
27-6 ‘But all of this you’ve seen with your own eyes.’
‘Countless be the eves of your unmaking.’
‘Fear not your end, for you shall live again.’
‘Death is but the night before the morning.’
28 Gronde recalls unmaking through the spirit,
The burning flame, the taste of smoke and ash.
Yet, the memory evades the conscious,
As it was not borne into transcendence.
28-1 ‘So, tell me this at least, Azarius,’
‘What shall be omen of The Waning time?’
He replies, ‘It shall descend from heaven…’
‘Falling star that ye shall call the Bolide.’
28-2 ‘And these shall be my final words to you’
‘Until the era of the end of days.’
‘Spare me from the beast lest ye be ruined.’
Prophet’s eyes then close and voice falls silent.
29 Azarius reposes in the crypt,
Dragon Gronde defending silent prophet.
Nezulim grow restless in unknowing,
And turn upon each other out of fear.
29-1 The dragon kind shall manifest their dread,
And place a stone upon the crypt of Gronde.
Serpent and the man are sealed within it,
Master of the Nezulim is silenced.
29-2 Without a lord, they turn their plots and foils.
Of those who rise, the greatest be cast down,
And of the ones who hide, a number flayed,
For there shall be no sanctum found on Vê.
29-3 How ravenous the tribe that slays their villain.
The Nezulim shall bare their vile fangs.
Many with a voice are thusly silenced—
Both the honored and the wretched ruined.
29-4 Vê’s new dawn brings glow to western darkness,
And annum marks each day as done before.
Flora still yet bloom, and fauna gather,
While Nezulim must further cull their kind.
30 All with sight on Vê await the Bolide
Which shall descend within a brilliant light.
So, it has been foretold by the prophet…
Alas, a star, the herald of the end.
“Manna of The One”: The divine or spiritual power sustaining a living material being.
“The Waning Era” or “The Waning”: The period of decline of the Vallis garden marked by tumultuous periods of environmental catastrophe, and culminating in the destruction of habitable Vé leading up to the exodus.
Sols: Annum or the equivalent of a year.
The Highlands of Keveer: A rugged, rocky, high plateau that was thought once to be within the Vallis gardens but had been pushed upwards by geologic forces rendering it inhospitably hot and dry.
Yune: A tall, narrow spire of volcanic glass reaching high above the mists of Vallis.
Dragon’s drone: A perceived musical pitch or tone projected by dragons to disorient, confuse, and drive their prey to hypnotic madness.
The Bolide: The falling star that signifies the end of days.
