From the enveloping dark, Professor Aionia's voice rang smooth and clear like a guiding torch.
Eleven thousand years ago, in the dawn of human memory...
In the great landmass of Terra Universalis, which then embraced half the earth...
Humankind became conscious for the first time.
Out of the beasts and the desolate wilderness,
Out of the frozen world, out of caves of old,
Arose the first founder of all, whereupon our destiny was steered.
Her name was SUNNA, who brought with her the Art and Gift
To wield holy fire,
To banish the night, to drive away the beasts.
With her passing, she rose to fuse with the ORI of the Sun,
Becoming it, enfueling it, restoring light again to its dying form.
Therein ended the great Ages of Ice,
That once enfeebled the Earth.
Next arose MANASURA, who could see what others could not,
And blessed us the power of water,
To carve the lands, to irrigate it entire
To quench forever-thirst and hunger,
To grow what could not be grown.
It was by his blessing, his foresight and wit,
That civilization was sown
As barley upon the soil,
Our first attempt at the conquest of time.
Entwining his soul with the ORI of the Moon
He arose to the heavens as a MAHA over the world,
To guide the cycles of the waters and the oceans,
To bring the rains and tides to the peoples of the land.
Next stood TERA and SERA, esteemed brother and sister,
Who with ingenuity and resolve,
Discovered what it was, to shape the earth itself.
From their hearts and hands issued forth writing and craft;
They became the first artisan and scribe,
The first architect and engineer.
After all had been done, and his hands could work no more,
TERA joined his soul with the ORI of the land;
And SERA, in sorrow that her brother would not rise to celestion,
Became as a bridge to the sky,
As a ring across the Earth.
And finally, as the peoples grew,
There came ARTAIA, the last FOUNDER of all.
Cast out for her difference, between Kaha and Form,
ARTAIA knowing frhi, the world seeing mahn,
She sojourned the unwelcoming earth
In search of acceptance, finding none.
So upon the edge of a cliff she came, intending to end her being,
But a boy she saw, the same as she,
And she jumped to save, unafraid for her life.
In her sacrifice selfless, in the rushing of the wind,
She found the power over air, everywhere and forever,
And with her finding, made the greatest gifts of all,
Of song and epic, music and medicine,
Impressed to a language ultimate in being.
For in nothing does humankind
More approach the MAHA of Time,
In Preserving its memory,
Forever upon twine.
In her wish to aid the peoples of the world,
Past even the wall of untimely death,
ARTAIA's eyes became the stars upon the sky,
Her soul its ocean, her hands its starfall,
To answer all wishes, wishes unnumbered.
And thus it was, with their powers as one,
That civilization prospered,
Their achievements joyous.
For four-thousand years, from the
Time of the FOUNDERS, the world indulged peace,
Knowing good and evil, of right from wrong.
Libraries brimmed as gold with knowledge of old,
Lands brimmed with cornucops of crop and fruit,
Discoveries of the heavens, and the ORI abound,
There rose monuments that rivaled heaven.
Few brave souls, in their courage and daring,
Stood upon the footholds of a discovery greater still,
To leave this earth, to touch the moon,
To sail the endless sea, that was cosmos for us all.
But alas, all that is, was not to last,
For upon the waning crescent of that called fate,
Upon the turn of the millennium fourth,
The skies and lands, and the great void beyond
Tore asunder, and into our domains
Flooded forth the Aeterii.
Belonging to neither this Earth, nor
Our cosmic plane,
Made of species sentient
With civilizations their own,
The Aeterii invaded our home,
Shattering paradise.
From heavens we fell and in skies we were slain,
And Thunders wailed around our fallen blood,
Burning with Fires of Oblivion.
For a thousand years,
Dreams of peace were uttered with mockery,
Dreams of what once was, now more than a legend,
The bright Sun and blessed Earth, now only myths in name.
Conquered and divided, along Elemental lines,
We humanity could no longer claim
The right to the throne of Earth,
Our Mother from which we sprang.
But we did not relent,
For each of the Great Houses
Of the FOUNDERS and their Lines
Sallied forth in the name of freedom
To reclaim our just dominion.
A quarter century, valiantly they fought
But Alas, they could not break the new chains,
As the cruel Fates did ordain.
The Aeterii, cowed by the force
Of the children of the FOUNDERS
Even 4 millenniums since their ascension to the sky,
Resolved to forever neuter, to destroy
The Great Lineage of the FOUNDERS,
Slaying the remainder who could claim their origins
To SUNNA, MANASURA, to TERA, and SERA.
Our leaders and beacons of light utterly destroyed,
And forgetting the greatness of the Epitomes of ourselves,
Our strength in the Mahamastra,
Was doomed to wane.
The Aeterii, punitive to our revolt,
Fractured our kingdoms into mere shadows of themselves,
Forcing us to lean on their own
As clients and servants, a great disgrace.
For more millenniums, two and a half,
We great humankind, was starved,
Enslaved, force to squabble among our own,
Requiring permission from the Aeterii
To even dream of dreaming.
But what they did not expect,
These Aeterii, immortal and arrogant,
Was that one thread from the lineage
of great MANASURA
Escaped their blades, and survived through time.
Into this unbroken Line
Tracing to the FOUNDER of Mashur,
A boy was born, named
Yanasura.
Though a slave, and buffeted by fate,
Yanasura dared to dream of dreaming:
A World without Aeterii,
Where Humankind is restored
As One and All.
And so, through his wit and Mashur,
And Courage foremost,
And Genius of a kind in quality divine,
Yanasura freed himself, his band of brothers,
Escaping to a retrenched human State
Where he could climb the ranks of power.
Slowly and surely he bid his time,
And in campaigns of conquest
Against neighbors of own,
A coup he staged, and the throne he seized.
Through campaigns of war and word,
Brilliant beyond measure of all,
Yanasura united humankind
Under One Banner once more,
Crowning himself the Emperor of Stars.
Under his rule, wise and just,
Enterprising and benevolent,
Restored were we, Humankind
To the semblance of eternity which we held long ago.
Terra Universalis, the name of half the earth,
Was blessed to bear the name of the Emperor,
Becoming the lands which we now call Yanasura;
The Seven Knights of Emperor Yanasura
Assembled also in concord,
Ready to defend against any and all evil;
Cornucops began to flow again
With flowers and fruit.
And yet, haunted by the terror of his past,
the Emperor could not stay his hand
In exacting the error of his dream.
Invading the Aeterii, seeking the demise
Of their seeds total till none could remain
Emperor Yanasura unfolded a war
From which we could never return.
Humankind pushed the Aeterii back
To the summits of despair
And in our mistake, the Aesynir,
The divine rulers of the Aeterii,
Unleashed a strategy
Of mutual and utter ruination.
Into this world, not knowing their fates,
But abandoning hope all the same,
They released the world-serpent
Mahazduhum, to devour Yanasura
And his Empire whole.
The Emperor, realizing the doom
Which he himself had wrought,
Gave his life in sacrifice,
Along with four of his Knights,
to give his peoples
a fighting chance.
And yet, with monuments all but destroyed,
The spires slain and ziggurats devoured,
Humankind could not hope
Not at all
To defend against the onslaught
Of the Aeterii once more.
Though the Knights of Yanasura,
Remaining three in number
Fought with might and strength
To dwarf any warrior on Earth,
They could not stay the relentless tide
With just a broom in their hand.
And so, the Aeterii
Conquered humankind with such finality,
That they severed the divine line
From each human to the FOUNDERS.
Children born no longer had their Maht;
The survivors were massacred,
Annihilated en-masse,
Crying in envy of the restful dead.
The remainder of ourselves,
Who still roamed, were everywhere enslaved
Or turned into beasts and monsters,
By the curse of the Aesynir,
As eternal punishment for our supposed sins.
But nearly seven centuries later,
We humankind awoke our powers again,
Our legacy to the FOUNDERS restored,
For reasons unknown.
And when we awoke, broke our chains,
And many returned also
From the beasts we had been cursed to be,
We found all the Aesynir slain,
Their thrones destroyed,
The remainder of the Aeterii
Scrambling for order.
What followed hence,
Was a half century of chaos,
With nations made and broken,
In the span of single days,
Until rivers of blood
Flowed all over Yanasura.
And human to human,
From Aeterii to human,
And human to Aeterii,
And from Aeterii to Aeterii,
Lives were cleaved from fellow souls,
Desperate in thirst
For a mirage called paradise.
Spears fell, fires ablaze, the earth shattered and the air shadowed,
Blood flowed upon the lands of Yanasura,
So much so that the divinities wept
In their repose of heaven.
And from the anguished souls of that ravaged land,
From the anguished souls of this chaos and death,
From all the sins of humankind and Aeterii combined,
Arose a being in might, towering as the harbinger of the END,
MAHANAI, the King of All Ends,
MAHANAI, He Who Has No Epithets.
Awakening upon this earth, he fractured the continents;
Cutting them, cleaving them entire,
Until the lands of Yanasura began to drown under the waves.
MAHANAI's power was such that no being
Mortal or Divine,
Not even the Mahanir nor the Aesynir,
Could even be conceived in the minds of their followers
To challenge or assail against him.
MAHANAI continued his relentless advance,
Intent on erasing all living things entire.
From the collapsing shelves,
We ran, we ran, we ran, and ran,
Our numbers teetering mere thousands,
Whittled from the once billions that used to be
Under the auspices of the Emperor
Nearly a millennium before.
To the peninsula of Mythrise we set our foot,
Huddled upon the abode of DEIA AETERNITAS,
The Sacred Mountain and Volcano of AIEN,
Our last bastion of hope,
The one place where MAHANAI,
Could not drive us to doom.
But still the King of All Ends advanced, advanced upon us all.
And so it was, upon the axis of destiny,
Upon the edge of that dagger called transient time,
There appeared two brothers,
AHURA and MITHRA,
Scions of the last Knight of Emperor Yanasura,
To defend the last of mankind to their dying breaths.
MITHRA united the fractured peoples, both humankind and Aeterii
And led them to safety in the halls of the Mountain;
AHURA stood alone against the King of All Ends,
For he was the stronger of the two.
Bravely AHURA battled, breaking his body,
But driven to despair, he ultimately was,
For MAHANAI was divine, and he was not.
For his last chance to save all that was dear,
AHURA called upon the souls in the Labyrinth of Echoes,
The KAHA of two billion, who perished in their flight,
Trampled under the King of All Ends, bristling for justice.
'Will you fight for us?' They asked AHURA,
'Will you protect our descendants?' They made him vow,
And with a resounding YES, AHURA accepted their combined wills,
As the FIRST ENCARNACION of all,
Becoming the LORD and champion of anguished billions.
With the power of two billion souls,
AHURA took to the sky in defiance of MAHANAI.
For seven days and nights they fought,
Above the oceans, the mountains, over Mythrise itself,
Reshaping the world in the fury of their exchange.
But alas, even this came short of defeating MAHANAI,
Who approached the mountain,
Determined to slaughter us all.
Having no choice but to fulfill his oath,
AHURA tore his body to open the gate to the Abyss,
The Infinite Void between the Many Worlds.
Into the Abyss, AHURA hurled the King of All Ends,
And shattering his bones and flesh, stitched it close,
Banishing MAHANAI to wander in the dark.
Fall, he did, AHURA did,
His body broken, last rites upon him,
Collapsing to the summit of AIEN, the Sacred Mountain.
To his aid, his brother MITHRA climbed,
And sought to restore his might;
But AHURA refused, feeling the call of SERA
To his ascended brethren in the sky.
With grave warning he cautioned his brother,
That MAHANAI, the King of All Ends, shall one day return,
And with a final breath and one last embrace,
AHURA passed the tenth of a billion souls that remained in him,
For his brother MITHRA to receive,
Anointing him as the next ENCARNACION, second in name,
To mend the world anew, and restore mankind and Aeterii,
Having faced together the spectre of death.
MITHRA began the ANNUS MITRAYA,
The Age in which we live,
Founding The First Republic,
With neither King nor Queen, Empress nor Emperor,
A Revolution for its time.
Laying out laws and foundations, to last millennia,
He bound contract upon the surviving peoples, decreeing it thus:
'Never again would mankind fall to war and despotism,
between itself or all the Aeterii,'
'Never again shall we lose our paradise upon the Earth.'
With the might as ENCARNACION,
MITHRA was divine;
But for the good of all, this power he hid,
And kingship or divinity he rejected without question,
That the peoples of the world would not rely upon him,
But rather choose and forge their own paths to take.
MITHRA, in secret, found a worthy successor,
And before SERA lifted him on her bridge to Celestion,
Passed all its souls, knowledge, power,
To the generation that came after him.
The mantle of the ENCARNACION passed this way,
From Tanaar to disciple, like torches in the dark,
Lighting the way through the long lonely night.
Eight centuries later, it found its way to ASTINEL,
A boy who could see spirits,
Who as the new ENCARNACION, 19th in name,
Sought the advice of souls, to defend Mythrise against Jin,
Whose peoples descended from those
That preserved themselves in stasis
when Emperor Yanasura fell.
For nearly a thousand years they had slept,
Awaking only after AHURA's battle with MAHANAI,
In another continent, far across the ocean,
A veritable haven which MAHANAI had been unable to touch.
So they, the People of Jin, having no knowledge
Of the curse of the Aesynir, the fall of humankind,
Nor our restoration, and our witness of MAHANAI,
And above all our resolve to never war again,
Shared not the ideals of the republic of MITHRA.
Driven and compelled by the spirit of conquest,
And to assert their rightful claim as true successors of humankind,
They invaded our home and chained our people,
But ASTINEL, with DEIA TANA as his Tanaar,
Succeeded in restoring Liberty for us all.
From ASTINEL to his disciple, the torch of the souls
And the spark of the divine was then passed,
And from that disciple to another, worthy of its name.
The mantle of the ENCARNACION, thus for a thousand more years,
Crossed the Mountains of Time, waiting, awaiting,
Preparing the world and its people upon the land,
For MAHANAI would one day kick down the doors of night,
And return to this world to devour it whole.
Elwin and his kismets saw a long line of epic figures from history, many who they've never heard, the torch of the ENCARNACION passing from one figure to another, protecting its light against the cold stormy night, at whose very end, stood Professor Aionia, her features in chiaroscuro, mighty torch in hand, enlightening the world.
The kismets opened their eyes, cold sweat upon their brow, breathing in gasps. It felt as though an eternity of knowledge had been enlightened to them in an instant; it was as if they had lived the lives of all those in the myth. And when the world returned to them they saw Professor Aionia as she truly was, upon the irises of her eyes the light of a million stars and a brilliant Sun, radiant like luminescent amber under the auspices of noon.
"I am the 50th ENCARNACION, witness in line to the last Sun of YANASURA!"
Her voice rang through their heads like a chorus of ten thousand voices, in them a young woman's, an old man's, a child's, in each thread and weave the voice of every mother, every father, every son, every daughter, every hero, every general, every healer, every artisan, every water-carrier, every engineer, every scribe, every philosopher that had ever lived, even the voices of who she called Aeterii, sentient creatures and beings that did not originate from the Earth.
All that open bedchamber seemed to dim in contrast to the radiant light that shone from Professor Aionia; the winds roared in temper across the open columns and walls, the leaves of ferns swaying as if in a storm. They felt a deep rumble across the ground and the earth and across the lush valley below, and every droplet of mist in the air, carried by the waterfall just outside, became utterly suspended as if pulled taut by strings. Elwin could see the weaves of ORI with his waking eyes; Encarnacion Aionia was more brilliant than the Sun, the Moon, and the stars altogether.
All this time, she had been his Tanaar.