A Story of Beginnings

Despite what you may think, this story isn’t really a story about me. Yes, it’s my story and yes, I’m at its center. But I feel it’s the people who I surrounded myself with who these volumes are really speaking for. It’s about the ones who bonded with me in kinship even when my hands were bloodied by the unjust killing of others. It’s about the Dįvįnë beings who entrusted me with a lot more than I felt I was worth.

It’s about the people who loved me even when I faltered.

Lives and deaths; peace and war; Dįvįnëlÿ born beings, Fallen and otherwise. And trials and consequences. It’s a story of beginnings as much as it’s a story of endings. It’s the story of the Dįvonësë War. A conflict whose cost, I often find myself thinking, was far too high. Too many good people were not only lost in the midst of that great fray, but also in the many years building up to it as clandestine games were played with people’s lives. And for almost a decade during the war proper, we fought tooth and nail in one way or another in nearly every corner of the world. Upon city streets, we bled the enemy and among open fields, they bled us in kind.

Great was the devastation and the loss; especially across my beloved Hesijua where I myself led the majority of the heavy fighting. And while not left utterly destroyed beneath the ocean waves as Assami was by the conclusion of the Ten and Five Year Wars, I fear that much of her soul has been lost. Two wars, a lack of a centralized government for a thousand years, the loss of its power base in the slave trade and constant social instability has left so little behind that the entire continent could be considered little more than a four million square mile ruin. And even in the wake of the massive efforts being undertaken to rebuild its cities, repopulate its towns and holdfasts and to reinstate the monarchy, it’s quite possible that it will be many decades before it’s capable of supporting a real infrastructure again. The land; my home as I once knew it, is forever gone. And it will never be the same.

So much knowledge was lost during the Dįvonësë War and Hesijua’s collapse. Medical and social advances vanished in the fires of conflict. A mass of technology was left behind that too few people left alive remember how to manipulate or what purpose it all served in the first place.

But, not all sadness is just that. Many are the blessings that lay in disguise.

Drågoons and Ångëls fought against the looming threat of Lumå’įl’s dominion while many of the races of the living world came together and aided them; fighting for a cause that many of them didn’t fully comprehend. But while the machinations that drove this conflict were largely unknown to most worldly beings, the possible result wasn’t. All who fought in the name of Åmbrosįå understood the consequences if the war was lost.

This event, this binding of the people, was a thing that had only happened one other time in the three thousand years since the regrettable fractioning of religion, the Technological Revolution, and the start of what’s known by The Magisterium as the Golden Age of the Craft.

Goddess, the Craft! The feel of the heka in the air!

I’m constantly amazed at the thought of how the Magi moved out openly from the confines of our homeland to aid in the skirmishes against the Fallen. More than a few hard fought battles were won at the behest of my people’s gifts. An unprecedented show of force. As the Link hadn’t seen cause to march its Magi to battle since our self-exile from the “civilized world” since the Magi War.

A truly regrettable occurrence; but one that I’ll revisit later. I don’t want to stray too far from the point.

Even slaves fought alongside slave masters, granted temporary freedom with the promise of a more permanent liberty at the war’s end. A freedom that I and my family are, unfortunately, still leading a fight to award them. A freedom well deserved that should’ve been theirs by right.

A state of being that I was all too familiar with as a former slaver myself.

Some sins remain close on your tail, regardless of how far you try to run from them.

So much to tell; so much to say. A more accomplished author would, no doubt, begin such a tale in a masterful fashion. Something to capture your attention and wow your imagination. But as it stands, I’m just me. I’m no bard of great repute. Yet here I am. Trying to sing a song that demands a better vocalist.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

I’ve no real idea where to start. But I know where not to start.

Many people would say that the Dįvonësë War started with my birth at the hands of my guardian, mentor and friend, Zåkÿntħos. But that’s not entirely true. Some may even say that the beginning came with the meeting of the Dįvonësë, when my fate was judged and decided by the Choir of Ångëls. But that too, I think, is wrong. If I were being honest, it’s roots would reach back to the birth of Lumå’įl and the conception of Så’Ħdënåħ more than four million years ago.

If I were being honest and pretentious that is.

The Dįvonësë War, has roots that reach back to the beginning of beginnings. And the Ten and Five Year Wars explicitly. Specifically, the uprooting and relocation of the Tree of Life to conceal it from the Fallen when the dust had settled; the very focus of that conflict.

I’ve never considered myself to be a religious scholar by any means. And until it came time for me to play my role in this struggle; until I met Zåkÿntħos, I lacked real belief in anything. Even as the Ångëls themselves spoke to me, I stupidly blasphemed right to their faces. And yet, en lieu of my belief in Her, today I find myself the very center of religious focus, study and belief in the hearts and minds of Åmbrosįå’s faithful from every walk of life all over Mundus.

In spite of its checkered past, my home is still a beacon to which masses flock on pilgrimages to pray at the offshoot of the Goddess’ tree.

Despite my sins, the devout still lay their litanies at my feet.

And regardless of the blood on all of our hands, save for my youngest daughter, my family is still protected by religious mandate.

And on top of all I don’t deserve, I must contend with being a monarch. Something I walked into out of love yet something whose responsibilities I hadn’t fully considered; nor its symbolic requirements. Requirements such as the throne room that uprooted our home’s southern library. A monstrosity my dear friend Arjana conspired with my daughter Åålįŷah to build…acquiring the funding directly from the crown’s coffers without ever consulting me about it.

I’d have happily gotten rid of the Goddess-forsaken thing myself, but it’s since become synonymous with Įcħor-Nåbįlå and the people have grown to love it. I once questioned her about it all, and she told me out of her frustration with my lackadaisical approach to governance that-

“You can’t be a recluse of a ruler. And you can’t be an absentee religious figure. The people deserve to have an audience with their paragon! They need it! They need you!” she yelled at me. “Not Åålįŷah, Aoleon or Na’Kwanza. Not even the damned queen. You. Bottom line? You’re a king. And for all intents and purposes, a fucking Ǻngël for Åmbrosįå’s sake. And a Dįvįnë king needs to have a seat in which to sit his royal ass. Be present for your subjects.”

With time I’ve come to see the wisdom in that. Simple gestures tend to have the largest impacts. That doesn’t mean I have to like it however. Then again, what could I do? Completely disregard one of my closest friends and confidants? Ignore the sense she made? It probably wouldn’t have mattered anyway how many times I would have told her that I was in no way, shape, form or fashion anyone’s paragon. Arjana wouldn’t have had any of it. And the council loves her.

I guess that Arjana just has a lot of her great, great grandfather in her. At the very least, she’s just as influential as Waimund was if nothing else. Or, should I say forceful in the use of her colourful metaphors.

I’m everything that I am by pure happenstance. But where I see happenstance, apparently others see providence.

But I digress. I’m rambling.

I feel unworthy of immortality. And I’m even less worthy of the Dįvįnë status that has been granted to me. It’s the great life of a great person. Not the life of a slaver, a murderer.

A...häshäshēēñ.

The time has come I feel. I stand ready to be judged for all I’ve done. Long have I known that the sins of my past would have to come for me. That the world would demand I be judged. It’s inevitability. So I welcome it now. I only hope for the strength to bear their consequences. For both I and my family. I lay myself bare in these pages with the hope that by doing so, my people will be granted some level of understanding as to how I got here, why I am the way that I am and why I did what I felt had to be done. That my family will know why I hurt them and how sorry I am for it; that I love them.

By Brŭmal, maybe I too will even obtain a better understanding of myself.

So, what am I? Without facetiousness or narcissism, I’m the beginning and the end. I’m everything and I’m nothing. Mine is the hand that held the torch that burned the village and mine is the hand that carried the water that put it out. I’m the protected and the protector of the Goddess and God. I’m the basis of the dream and the essence of the night terror. I’m the son of man and I’m a child of the Dįvįnë. I’m the gift and the curse. Hope and despair, righteousness and sin. I’m a Drågoon!

But what does it mean to be a Drågoon? What does it mean to cease a mortal existence and become one with the Lady of Light and her family of Ångëlįcs, or to consort with the Lord of Lies and his legions of the Fallen?

This, my dear readers, may actually be the question that leads me to that sought-after beginning.

Ångëlics and benevolent souls. Fallen and dæmönŝ. And the war that shaped the trajectory of Mundus over one thousand years ago.

The callousness of two Dįvįnëlÿ borne beings.

The birth of one of the most important and influential Drågoons of our time.

And the destruction of a civilization during one of the last major conflicts of the Ten and Five Year Wars…the Massacre of Athel.