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PROLOGUE: ETERNAL KINGDOM

Book of the Dawn, chapter two.

  And in the realm of perpetual light, amidst the hues embodied in the rising sun lived the Eloi, who danced and frolicked upon the peach-tinted clouds and rainbow splashed fields of Elysium. Here, they sang praises to the Sun, their God, for all eternity. As this world was of light and joy, there, too, was a land of darkness, situated upon a craggy barren landscape. The realm of Dusk was inhabited by a race of Elders, who took on themselves the sickness and age the Eloi were spared, for with every blessing must come its reciprocal in the form of a curse. From their salty tears formed seas, and from their feces sprouted molds and fungi. Their terrible bodies writhed and clawed through waste and bile seeking solace from the harsh, fetid winds and fierce colds that made up their realm- a bastardization of the Dawn. As one rubs salt in the wounds of an enemy or scorned vagabond, the joyous ones singing from the Realm of Dawn shook the world of Dusk, and the vibrations smote the bleeding ears of the Elders, multiplying their agony a thousand fold.

  Beneath the tallest, craggiest mountain ranges lived a great behemoth by the name of Abigor. The chorus of angelic children soon awoke him from his thousandth thousand-year slumber. He rose up in a terrible anger that destroyed the craggy peaks that were his bed.

  “‘Who doth smite mine ears and disturb my repose with the shrieking of children?’' The great beast roared as he stretched his mammoth limbs and clawed at the grey skies.

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  A wretched Elder being, called a Morlock, raised his fanged maw from the neck of a fellow sufferer and replied thusly “‘The Eloi sing praises to their god, the sun, in Dawns embrace amongst the clouds.’”

  With a roar to cause the sullen skies to tremble, Abigor lifted a stone with his massive hand and cast it into the sky. With the shriek like that of shattered glass, the sky was splintered and a fissure erupted between Dawn and Dusk.

  The ensuing vortex swallowed sunbeams from both worlds; clouds and oceans of tears were consumed by the void. From the Dusk the growths and oceans were pulled to the stone, bringing with it sickness and the ravages of time. From the Dawn came beauty, youth and the joy of a radiant sunrise. The Elders who escaped to the stone rejoiced as the weight of sickness and age lifted from their weary shoulders, unawares that the reprieve was only temporary.

  The winds soon stabilized in the vacuum as the stone orbited one of the millions of sun specks that fell into the void. The feces became soil upon rocks, the growths of moss and fungus became forests and grasslands, and the tears became rivers and oceans.

  The Elders bore strong and healthy children, whilst the children of Dawn continued to frolic, oblivious to their lost immortality. The Eloi cast their seed and opened their wombs to the elements while the Elders toiled and worked the land for food and shelter. From the Eloi’s soil-born children the race of elves was born. Those wretched beings that took on the toll of time's incessant march, to scrape a living from the soil became the race of men. Still others remained, beastial and feral, to inhabit the mountains and live on the blood of others as their ancestors did. Finally came the fey, offspring of eloi and man dilluted by generations, borne mortal and of the elements, fanciful and fleeting as the wind.