Past

Buoyed by a successful bargain, Prospero returned to the waiting Gods and announced His victory. The chain glittered in His grasp and it was Aegis first to answer, counselling a need for firmness of will and not only a sure strike if They were to see to the relic’s destruction. The Malevolent One claimed primacy in this task, but even His will faltered beneath the implacable decree of the Jade Empress.

As the firmament and all below it stilled with the manifestation of Lorielan’s will, She declared unto the listening realm that She would be the One to bear the burden of breaking.

“You are the Eldest, now. It is Your right. And perhaps it will slake a thirst.” Valnurana’s somnolent assent gave way to the voice of the Lightbringer’s encouraging accord, and all disagreement among Gods yielded to silent acquiescence.

Once more it was Aegis Who first broke the quietude. Declaring that all the Gods would lend the Empress Their aid, to break both the Chain’s great blessing and its terrible, terrible curse, the God of War wove a sliver of His quintessence and imbued Lorielan’s hand with the iron will of disciplined formations and courageous armies.

One by One, all the Gods followed suit. From the Lightbringer came Hope. From the Righteous Fire, Justice. Malevolence conferred a conqueror’s will and the Wayward Heir bestowed a fraction of Her independence and determined spirit. Gaia’s gift was life and death in equal measure, and from Oblivion came the cold agony of enlightenment. Sea and Sky lent confident necessity and the strength of deep fathoms to the Empress, tempered by the generosity and balanced hand of Phaestus. Mystery followed from Ourania, and ego from Haskor.

Prospero, fresh from His negotiations, granted the weight of a bond unbreakable and the Dream, endless and terrifying, gave soothing balm and death sentence both. Grey mist flowed forth from the Genesis, the Realm of Death and the indomitability of the Meld entwining about the hand of Jade. From the Absent Knowing, an infusion of wisdom shaped for Lorielan alone. And from Twilight, Eldest of the Realms and Younger only to Lorielan Herself, the arcane knowledge to change reality that is the core of Darkness eternal.

Last of all the gathered Gods, the Great Bard gave freely of His vision for Creation, a vision of all mortality elevated, all story made memorable, all narrative limned by great deed and fell consequence.

The combined might of the Pantheon veiled the Empress of Jade in a vortex of variegated quintessence, joining all the living realms of Creation’s Divinity into a harmony unheard since the beginning of the beginning. Since time became time, when the Pantheon stood at the summit of All that Is to call forth sound and silence in merger to the song of an era lost, now set against the hope of an era to come again…

… the will of an era to come new, and the search for an era to be made real.

Wielding the might of the Gods, Lorielan took hold of Aeon’s Golden Chain. Forged by Proteus, the indivisible made divided by Will of Ayar, now Sarapis, gone Beyond for an eternity, the ancient relic strained against Her grip. Time warped to the touch of this foreigner upon inviolate Realm, but the Jade Empress closed Her fingers and the resistance to Divine Will Incarnate, Eldest of the Elders, faltered.

In an instant it was over. In an eternity it was over. In centuries and seconds and the temporal interstitia of minutes, hours, and days-weeks-months in the knowing and the slow remembrance, it was over.

Reality shuddered with the destruction of the Protean Relic and in its wake, echoes began their flicker beyond the edge of perception. Sweeping waves of power set loose run across and back the abyss of Time, hurling open doors once closed, evaporating into clouds of golden mist. And about that point betwixt the sundered Chain did the Mist of Memory converge.

It streamed from the great and small, forgotten and remembered, great monuments and humble shrines. Books lovingly read and secrets whispered in condemned secrecy released their recall, and the land heaved forth the great deeds of eons past.

It rose, coalescing far above even the topmost branches of the World Tree. Over the heights of Mannamot it climbed, Time and Memory condensing to an impenetrable nimbus set above even the Elements themselves.

Then Lorielan opened Her hand. The mist fell from Her fingers in a shimmering cascade, sinking like smoke and obscuring the heavens with an inscrutable, formless veil, which immediately began to thin. Memory moved and Memory settled, revealing fresh contour beneath its flowing mass, and soon the branches of a great crown sharpened into view. A shining herald to all the Lightened worlds beneath, its majesty proffered wonder on branch and bough, stars and worlds circling about a realm of revelation once again homed within the highest layers of Yggdrasil.

The mist flowed down the tree and along eave and branch, touching all worlds and realms under the World Tree’s shadow. Stars fell like shimmering rainfall and blanketed all that is with the gift of great deed and storied suffering, beckoning mortality to reforge the old and tread again the new.

And as the Gods withdrew from sight to process the reveal of Uphimmin’s fabled Crown, Lorielan spoke one more time unto all the listening Creation:

“History is in your hands, now. Live it. There is no more Logos to guide it. Dwell not upon failed Seleucar.”

In Her wake, mortality loosed a held breath, the past now reconciled with the present and the future now the charge of mortal hand, not a relic’s catastrophic tragedy.

~ ~ ~

Summary: Prospero returned to the Gods with the Golden Chain and Lorielan volunteered to bear the burden of breaking it. Wielding the combined might of the entire Pantheon, the Jade Empress shattered the chain and released the mist of memory back into Creation. As the mist cleared, the Uphimmin branches of Yggdrasil revealed themselves to mortality along with countless echoes of the past. With the chain broken, Lorielan bestowed the responsibility of history’s making upon the watching mortals, challenging them to surpass Seleucar and to realise Scarlatti’s dream by taking command of their own myth.