When the myriad planes lay cooling,
beneath fields of burgeoning stars,
a god of fourfold breath bestrode the fringes vast,
bending His mind to matter and motion.

He split stone to watch its heart beating,
coaxed fire to heed His call;
He whispered to the wind to soothe its whirling,
sculpted water into shapes that held.

Long ages unravelled,
and He grew sharp-tempered, precise,
a spirit carved by the slow grind of knowing,
forged in the blazing crucible of insight,
and honed in mystery's restless churning.

Murmurings of rebellion stirred around Him,
and He entered the pact as its wary third;
He pleaded for wisdom and caution,
time to harness, to gather, to fortify,
lest the Throne's grasp tighten around Them.

The plan fell swift to ashes;
Their foe was greater than any knew.
The cause was lost before its making,
the Queen a pawn in truth.

One companion sank into crystal coldness,
another stiffened into unyielding stone,
and He, stripped of His mantle,
would live His regret upon silvered hooves.

But when the Smith lay bound within His hammer,
caged by a devouring Other,
the unicorn's heart felt a force uncertain:
one that moved Him and denied all taming.

Mortals gathered shreds of earth, of flame, of air and tide,
and to the Beast they trusted their shaping;
He drew, and channelled, and remembered His will,
and freed the Maker from His prison.

In the hush that followed,
He stood, restored, forgiven.
He showed His learning was without boundary,
and mastered doubt and fear at last.

When domination stirred again of Evil's making,
He proved His tempered pride and widened sight;
The Dreaming One was broken, blind, and voiceless,
and He heard the echo of exile in Her silence.

He gathered a wind-spirit's swiftness
and the shimmering resolve of hummingbirds' wings.
With gentle hands He bound their fragile brightness
to the Lady who wandered voiceless
until speech and lullaby were Hers once more.

Still His tongue was sharp and scathing,
and His patience brooked no folly,
but those who dared to know Him best,
found beneath His severity a quiet care.

And when the secret fire behind all fires grew dim,
the Devourer bending its warmth to blight,
the Elemental One broke the seal to let Light in.
Though She struck true, the Reaver towered whole,
and He who knew the cost of every choice advanced.

Gathering the breadth of His fourfold being,
He tore corruption from its source
and vanished as the tether snapped -
a final, fierce unbinding.

Thus His legacy endures the ages:
wrought not of treachery nor elemental might,
but in the shifting of a once-unyielding heart.
In His final act, the world felt grace -
a truth revealed through sacrifice.


Penned by my hand on the 22nd of Chronos, in the year 991 AF.