I recall a time when I could shake the very foundations of the world. My will was law, my desire ascendant. With but the least touch of my divine presence I could upend all that was.

Not that I would have ever done such a thing, my children. You were far too precious to me to toy with your lives so irresponsibly. Yet it is to my shame that when the moment came when such power was warranted, I was too lax in my stewardship to know it. When the time came that I would shatter creation to save a remnant, our world was already too far gone. I failed you, my children. Even in ensuring that when the end came you died well, I failed you.

Now, I would happily send all of existence hurling into the void so long as I went with it. Yet I was utterly spent by the simple act of unbalancing a mortal in a key moment. Worse still, my power waxes with unbearable slowness. The crops of fear I planted in the Oruke are uprooted. There are those who have awakened in this new world who still recall me as the eater of the fallen, but even they no longer truly fear me. Why would they? In ones and twos they stumble on the truth that the gods no longer hear and react to every utterance of their names. A new kind of faith is ascending.

I am aware of one small, far-off band of elves who have placed my likeness from Oruke on their war banners, and from that I glean a bare trickle of belief. Thus I am reduced to existing as a dream of myself while my strength marshalls.

So it is I lurk around this nameless strip of verminous sand, guessing at the role this so-called Claimant had in a conspiracy that broke a world. Is this the Traitor? If so, he is a master of deception, burying every clue behind a veil of affable oafishness. Is this the Paragon, silently devoted to the task at hand and nothing more? Is the Dreamer so lost in the dream as to sleepwalk through life? The only spark I have seen from Istroama was when he spoke of battle, where for a moment he exulted in the destruction of his foe.

If I was in the fullness of my power, I would make Istroama my Champion, simply so he would be sure to endlessly survive the tortures I would inflict upon him. Would that I could crack his mind open like one of those ludicrous Lasle nuts. Symeon, for his part, is a last dance whose every step I can know in a moment, but Istroama, there is a hardness to his thoughts that is largely impenetrable to me.

I hover over their littered clearing while Symeon labors with wood and stone, assembling a simple structure I would be generous in calling a hovel. It is more a mound of branches propped up with random rocks. As he sorts through the stones he places some in a circle away from the shelter, exulting when one of the stones sparks his interest. For his part, Istroama wanders the undergrowth near the river, knife brought to bear against moss and leaf.

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The forest canopy casts all in shadow, obscuring the comforting presence of Grandfather Chaos. Istroama’s pace slows as a breeze pushes through the tangle of massive ferns, and I can begin to see within him, my children. He recalls the Oruke, where the radiance of Chaos or Order was always present, sometimes both in the rare times before the next sortie saw one going forth into the unknown. There was no obstruction to the sight of the gods; it was only when this gift was shared with less benign divinities that things went wrong.

Istroama had been in the undergrowth just a few minutes ago, but that was with Symeon taking the lead. There were new things to see, things to do, and Symeon’s casual fearlessness. Now, Istroama is alone, in the shadow, in a place so alien to what he has known. The knife tumbles from his hand, he falls to his knees and begins to weep. He weeps, and the tears themselves mystify him for he does not understand the ways of his own flesh.

His mind is open to me now. That hardness was pure will, a determination to not show weakness, to not succumb to encroaching madness, and that hardness has peeled away in the drifting shadows of the forest.

I can see, but the failure of will that has let me in shows me naught but a mind utterly overthrown by shame. His thoughts are a loop where he tries to assure himself that this new world is better than the last, that the Pax Manifest was not a mistake. Even in his wildest dreams he could not conjure such as the world has now become. He prays within himself to the two gods who will never answer that when his people are released from the Chrysalises they will find it in themselves to forgive him.

All though this, his heart howls for help, even as he crushes the urge down. He already shows so much weakness before Symeon, but there is no-one else to turn to. His pride will not allow himself to be seen by another this way, even in this deepening well of confusion that comes from simply not understanding the sobs that wrack his frame.

The sound of his sorrow is lost in the wind that plays among the ferns.

Eventually there are no tears left, and as he realizes those tears are not some sort of strange new harm he calms himself. The light of Grandfather Chaos is merely obscured, not absent. The world is greatly changed, and if it is not a better world for his people then he will make it better. Slowly, the thoughtless smile returns as a front for that impenetrable will. He brushes the dampness on his face with the sleeve of his robe, though the robe absorbs nothing. It simply smears the moisture about into a muddy patina of fluid and dust. He regains his knife from the forest floor, and returns to hacking into the greenery with vigor.

I have heard him speak of this in passing before, my children, this Pax Manifest. There is now a thread, to be pulled with the utmost caution, and a promise of the mystery unravelled.