‘All beginnings will, and must, meet ends, as before they came to being. All that ends must come again anew, for it would be naught without beginnings. Alas! All that is, cannot cease to exist. Likewise, all that is naught, cannot come to exist. And thereof comes this cleave onto a way of things, and with its succor onto all since. Age on age, ceaseless, unending. Kept furtive watch into a way of things have I, in disavowal to the Maker's will, and beheld: Life. Sanity. Harmony... Man. Beholden I ever remain to the waves that wash away my deform, to Time who leaves Man be.’
I know not when, nor how, it broke. Yet searched and come to naught. A consummate telling now scattered as the feed for four winds long before the era of our great cities, and the rise of Spires. Whispers was I brought into. A ruination. A cheapness of life—cheapness, the stories surmised—born of gods’ death, sired by schemes so niding, schemes not dissimilar to the ways of Man. Great unending fires blotched the heavens on high, and for the many Suns and many Moons, onto the land did they fall; quaking and crushing, and into the lakes; boiling and befouling, and through the air; searing and sparsing.
Death and destruction came on all it touched, and not Man, not Darkling, not Beast, not Bird, not swimming nor creeping things, were spared. Nevertheless, it was not in their fall did we so break: No. Ours came at the hand of what this void brought forth; a great hunger, the like to dwarf all past, consuming all surviving the burning sky. The gods’ death was truly a call to riddance of all things, and yet, our last embers raged in defiance. Aflame and alive, not for life’s love, but death's cold fear. And I have come now to see; fear is but seedling to evil’s bitter fruits.
Now to the faithful bound, and sworn to speak no deceit; I scribe the whispers and scribe as witnessed. Heed these words and steel thine hearts. The hooded deceiver comes to us all, with tongue sweet as the dark berries, yet no less baneful: A right hand of power beyond compare, the left of killing edge.
Amuck were raids on the world, and so too pestilence, spawned from the dead-on forgotten fields. Men murdered and were murdered in the violence. Women, taken through steel’s edge; howbeit, unheard it was not, few offered themselves willingly to raiders in hopes of avenging lovers, brothers, and fathers lost to the fields. Fewer still for short comfort in ever-changing hands of powerful men.
Ceaseless strife seethed for the sake of greed, tribal dispute, kinship, and what machinations progenitors deemed worthy to let flow the thousand bloods. Death brewed finest wines, and all were given a choice of three at her banquet, though rage and cowardice steered my taste far from the longsome flavors of hunger and pestilence to the harsh sweets of savagery. We all ate and drank of her, and she, us. Reveling even in the madness murder cloaked as noble service to kin. But nobility had gathered her skirts and since fled far.
We were now people birthed from, and into, madness. Madness was the lot gifted to us, and the world would not lack for it. Marching cloth-wrapped feet into the ice again, again, again, and again. Weaving through freezing puddles of blood and frost, an Alderwood pike in hand. The timeless wood had become the choice of men who had no steel and seemed also to young women taken by vengeance. Stepping into fresh trails left in the raid’s wake and well ignoring the dancing Wisps, the rime-eyed blue-dead amidst red frost fields, ushered me down the killing path. Where it cleared to the immaculate white that blackened my toes.
Icy mist caked and cracked in my chest as jagged shards seeking escape from within; and for any numbness my feet accorded. Every biting breath of life taken was stabbing pain given in recompense. My fingers, balled tight into fists to stave off the numbing cold, would no longer pry themselves free from the mess of red where poorly kept claws dug into flesh. Where they destroyed the only honor, I strived possess. Where they became the first of many heralds.
‘Who have I become?’ As my mother before, I wore the weaver's mark: Deep-cut calluses suited to mend and craft. She would say those who were blessed with the weave were born to see beauty in hardships and make beauty enough to ease pain. Alas, the weave did little in saving her nor Eryn when the raiders came. Nor did it spare them the chains they gifted. Giarm; my father. Lavin, Alkur, and Skiel; my brothers, since taking to arms, fled to the fields with their bonds in tow never to return. We were alone and in hiding.
The jest, in wants to protect us they left us helpless and ripe for the raiders, and as predator to prey they found us. Hidden beneath large Reed baskets I watched and listened silently through Eryn’s wailing fight; tears ran down her pale cheeks, her strength now a vague memory. I watched as chains were dawned on my mother, her freedom and soon dignity stripped, but never was there a wail, no struggle; just the raiders’ deep cackles, and her sedate eyes as they were carted away like hogs. In the end, the raiders claimed them as they did many things, and many before.
Yes! Red tinge against sallow hands marked their end for the weave, that day they would be tested in the things of slaughter. Man could not beat back thrashing tides, and to try was to be Mad: This was Man’s way. The world’s way. My breath quivering shallow, and fingers aching to grip the branch, I staggered face-first into the snow. Turning to the black skies, my strength drained, and my feet refused my commands. The day was dark, and only then did I know I had walked the day. This will be my end. Not famine, pestilence, nor barbarity. It would be desolation. Shutting my eyes; too drained to grieve my life, I took deep blade-breaths of rime; and felt the stab, and myself fall quietly into the peaceful night. Perhaps this was not the worst end. ‘...Warm still... I will take her now...’
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Then I heard the voices intrude on my slumber, and felt gruff hands prop me on my side, eyes cracking enough to see a beast; a hulking shadow loom above me, it gripped my cloth and at once the fine threading came undone. At new vigor lit in me; I rose from the snow but the beast’s paw pushed my head back into the ice. ‘She breathes shallow... she breathes!’ shrieked a muffled voice. ‘Shut it, or I’ll make it so you can’t,’ finished the beast, hoarse and menacingly slow; No! now I knew it was no beast but a man. ‘Be still girl,’ he said, forcing my face deeper in still, any thoughts squirming beneath, at his beck came to an end. My body knew it was the easier thing to submit, the wiser even. ‘You’re some ways from the Thorps, aren’t you?’
Frost now drank up my tears, and a wail was trapped in my throat, only then did I remember the dead, the life that was left to me, and why I had walked all this way. ‘Are you alone, girl?’ The promise of peace had blinded me to this gift, but now it’s veil was lifted. ‘Get the collars, I’ll be taking this one.’ At his words, I felt my heart drum against my chest as the Bicorns’ hooves did the earth. Power thrummed in me, and my numbing hand buried in ice quickly came alive, still curled tightly around the cold wooden branch—I could not contain the elation and terror that cut my face in that moment. ‘He would be my cry into the night; this man will be my final defiance, my fight against dark unrelenting tides.’ And with unyielding resolve, I felt for him and swung with all my renewed vigor.
‘Arrgghh,’ I heard the rewarding thunder of a shout, and felt a sudden warmth flow into my frozen hand. Had I done it? I had killed a man? The thought flared in my mind. Yet his firm grip on my head did not lax, the vice grew tighter. ‘Sow!’ He bellowed, drubbing down my head harder into the ice, ‘Nothing sweet as beaten meat, eh, men?’ he said, grabbing and freeing my offending hand from the branch. Then I felt a fire in my hand and wailed a deep howl into the snow. ‘Not so painless, eh?’. A crazed chortle broke my pleading as he pulled out the spike and planted it in my other arm, and then again and again, into my side and the small of my back, I begged, wishing I had never dared to strike him until my breath again shallowed, and my pain numbed. Blood flowed out hot around me, but chill gnawed its way into my bones as well. I did not understand. Could not understand why men relished in knowing this pain.
A final stab and my thoughts settled, stilled into clarity: The gods were dead! Their subtle benevolence to our piety, no more. Man had become the gods, and like them, we too shall fall. And then peace called to me once again. That day, I died on a snow-screened field, but only after their fill was had.
Passing from this world of misery was a simple thing: to close my eyes, letting the ebbing pains flow through me; to hold back the retch of my blood-filled lungs; to simply let my mind ease into the black. My spirit, not known to me a night before, heard a call—one never heard before, through what I did not understand—a call so joyous and tender, a call to remind me I was loved despite all the hate given, a fickle filament of ignis fatuus that always eluded me. And I swayed my mind after it with little thought, and the voice indiscernible forged itself into my mind, her name: Orphes.
I had never taken a bond in life, it was forbidden for girls, but in my last moments I reached out my spirits into the void, desperate never to be lose the voice, her love. There was only silence to return, and cold felt colder, the darkness more lonesome. Why would she accept me?
My fading mind settled to scream but only that, there were no more tears, no more strength, now I awaited my end.
Light, hot and sharp flared within me and raged like a current raging against the shores, but there was no pain. I was free from pain, and though neither could speak, our feelings and deepest intentions were laid bare in an intimate and emphatic muse. A profound enlightenment. A power to create and unify: She is harmony; one sorely needed in our violent world, one to save us from the terrors of Man. one of white pristine and far from the mindless who sought only to destroy, only to consume.
Rising from the fields of ice, born to the world anew, now bearing the gifts of Orphes, my death wounds sealed themselves, color returned to my frozen blue skin, life flared bright in me, and in my hand nestled a great sword of blinding light: a single purpose burning with it, as the Onus against my breast, bringing this age of ruin to end.
And though then knowing was far from me, I had already brought a sorely needed gift to the world: a good god, and her light through me would set all aright, and thus birth this new age, the age of Maesters, Lords of men, and Sovereign legends.
But for every light, there comes dark callings.
The decades saw births and falls of empires and Maesters alike, and the rise of Aaryan the Shade; First of the Lost ones, and his be-named Sleepless horde; faceless death-dealers ever-creeping in their master’s shadow, seeking to bring an Ever-night to the natural world. They, of treacherous heresy, untrue and faithless, were met a final turn. Through endless campaigns, rivers of blood, and sacrifice untold, I, leading the Prophets and Paladins—greatest of the faithful, most elite of warriors—brought slaughter to the Lost ones in The Night War.
The Order fell that day. But by Orphes’ light, the words of salvation were spread to and beyond the four ends. Far and wide did her scripture survive her fallen warriors; few will find an end more noble.
Yet, never let vigilance wane; for every light, there comes dark callings.