Tribulation
31 The Raptors fill their stores and stock their vaults
In their preparations for The Waning.
More meager are the hunts and harvest days,
Yet each one exceeds the one that follows.
31-1 Each annum brings new harshness unto Vê.
Bright’ning Sol draws forth the plague of desert.
Seas of black shall rage within gray tempests,
And nights of cold shall sap the living will.
31-2 The garden wilts and bounty is no more.
Predators and prey must come together.
The starving hunters feast upon their kind.
Enmity in dragons grows ferocious.
31-3 Swarms of arthropods descend on Vallis,
Imposing pestilence and teeming blight.
Ravenous, their mandibles devour,
Their thirst for blood and nectar nay be quenched.
31-4 Swarms of black shall turn the day to twilight.
Their drone brings madness for high-minded beings.
Merciless, they prey on thorn and flower,
No remedy, save for a poison spore.
31-5 And when the poison festers in the pest,
The murmuration turns upon itself.
Emptied husks fall from the sky in deluge,
And winds then sweep them into brittle dunes.
31-6 If purpose of The One is bringing life,
What shall be the reason of this ruin?
Why does The One send pestilence and death?
Why has garden splendor been forsaken?’
31-7 Every Nezulim laments The Waning.
‘Why does The One bring vengeance unto me?’
This is asked but they deny the answer…
Their ruin was the harvest of sown greed.
31-8 As Nezulim so wail and grate their flesh
At the prospect of their final heartbeat,
Their source of angst reveals a blinded soul.
Every higher mind forgets recurrence.
31-9 Before a moth shall meet its end in flame,
Death’s despair shall not consume its spirit.
But those with higher minds do not recall:
All that is unmade shall yet be remade.
31-10 How can there be rebirth without passing?
And how can there be new without the old?
How can there be harvest without reaping?
And how can there be feast without the hunt?
31-11 If a fruited tree should be uprooted,
Its felling brings rebirth by scattered seed.
When a beast is felled by mortal wounding,
Its remains will nourish many living.
31-12 And when the elder’s body yields its soul,
It shall be to make way for the younger.
Curs-ed be the world of vane immortals,
Eternal life corrupts their stunted souls.
31-13 Nezulim are curs-ed in this manner:
They be immortal if they are not slain.
No future generation is foreseen,
All their life an epilogue of envy.
31-14 The curse of swarms shall not yet be the end,
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For vale and shelf as well will shift and break.
Plumes of steam shall vent from land in pillars,
The finned and gilled will foul the black sand shores.
32 The skies of Vê are darkened by the soot,
As the mountains rage with bursting fires.
Deep fissures open, drinking up the seas.
Vallis garden wilts within the shadow.
33 The rivers choke with lifeless flotsam mire.
In the darkness, frond, and stalk doth wither.
Ruminants succumb unto their hunger,
While hunters fatten on the gathered prey.
33-1 Harshest of all seasons comes to Vallis,
And all that yet survives will coalesce.
Nine of ten of all the living perish.
But four of seven Nezulim remain.
34 The Nezulim retreat into their crypts,
Where blood shall cool, and minds are brought to peace.
They resign to calm themselves for stasis,
Not knowing if they ever shall awake.
35 Gronde awaits in silence for His answer,
Azarius will not yet tell the day.
He will lead the exodus from Vallis,
Though kings shall not make passage when it comes.
36 Starless night shall span the length of seasons,
But sunrise of the annum shall approach,
And on that dawn, Sol rises in the west,
But its semblance is like dying embers.
37 Remnants of the Nezulim shall gather,
And take a counting of their buried stores.
They find their ration shall not full provide,
Thus, a further culling is required.
38 ‘Oh, when shall come the foretold Bolide star?’
Mourn the minds of wary and tormented.
They drone the desperation of their souls—
Prior lives entirely forgotten.
38-1 Gronde shall have a vision of past future,
Upon a realm beneath a muted Sol.
Beholding essence of the Nezulim,
And the means by which it is extracted.
38-2 A vision of the last of Nezulim,
Alive but frozen in sarcophagus.
Tended to by men in silver raiments,
Who draw the essence from the dragon’s nape.
38-3 By this dream, Gronde comes to know the future,
And also, Gronde perceives an ancient past.
That which has once come shall come tomorrow,
And that which is unmade shall be remade.
38-4 The dragon wakes beside Azarius.
Man perceives the dragon in his image.
Gronde, at once, remembers all the future,
And thus, the day of Nezulim is known.
38-5 There sits Azarius, the endless man,
Across from Him, the fated dragon beast,
Known to each, the fate that waits the other,
Known to each, the fate that comes to Vallis.
39 Azarius shall end His long repose.
To Gronde he speaks, ‘Indeed, the end is near.’
‘Bolide cometh once the heavens scoured,’
‘With it, a respite from The Waning curse.’
39-1 Gronde sends message to the other serpents.
The stone is rolled away from dungeon door.
Neither Gronde nor prophet deigns to venture,
As neither wills to pass into the light.
39-2 Gronde intones a solitary order:
‘If one has slain another without cause,’
‘Justice for this crime shall be commuted.’
‘For culling of our kind was unfulfilled.’
40 The mountains cease their rage of frothing ash.
Skies are cleansed from veil of soot and vapor.
In the night of apogee of winter,
A beaming star illuminates the dark.
40-1 When the Bolide comes down from the heavens,
Men shall recount it as a fallen star…
That hath broken from the heaven’s current,
To land upon the heights of Mount Meru.
