INTERLUDE II / Shine On Forever

Centuries ago, when the Colossi breached the divide between the world of monsters and the world of men, they found themselves lost in a landscape both inhospitable and utterly alien. This world was not for them; thus, so many of the titans succumbed swiftly to death and madness and disease. Theirs was a great exodus followed at once by a great dying, the aftershocks of which shattered human civilization to the very core.

But there were some who lived on, in the devastated aftermath - like Quectzich the Basilisk, or Sento the Condor. One such surviving titan was Ka'Taan, the Bile-Wolf, a hateful creature with ten legs and seven mouths who wore shadow like an old and ragged cloak. All across the ruined continent Ka'Taan hunted, tortured, and devoured humans for mere sport, and his vile essence spread across the land like tumorous disease. It was a time of misery, of decay, and of the stagnation that comes from terror without end.

Al'Varok, the Cyclopean Goat, known for his vanity and capriciousness both, had long since grown bored with the ruins of the old world and had thus deigned to live amongst the human survivors as one of their own, twisting and contorting and compressing his shape until he was all but unrecognizable. For many years he looked upon his fellow villagers in silent contempt, disdaining the hollow importance with which they regarded their own fleeting, chaotic lives. They were creatures of foible and folly and Al'Varok wondered to himself how such a foolhardy race of creatures had ever come to prosper at all.

But as the years went on, something within the Cyclopean Goat came to change. And all came to a head when the wretched Ka'Taan came to that forest with twelve dozen times twelve dozen corpses in his mouths and ten thousand more in his distended belly. He had come to do to the villagers as he had done to so many countless others, and in that moment Al'Varok was fully aware that he had well and truly changed. Because what he felt then, as Ka'Taan's shadow grew near, was love - pure, unadulterated, unvarnished love for these petty and stupid and fleeting and passionate little creatures that he had lived amongst for so long. And it was with unshakeable certainty that he knew he would not allow them to come to harm.

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Thus, Al'Varok shed his skin before their very eyes and emerged in his true form, his great eye blazing with purple fire and his fur a sheen of blinding white. And without speaking, he spoke to the villagers thus:

You need no longer fear, little things. For I have come to love you with all that I am, and I shall give unto you all that I am so that you may never again know harm. When I return to you, your world shall be a gentle one; one of peace and of prosperity.

And thus Al'Varok strode out into those poisoned woods, and thus did the Cyclopean Goat and the Bile-Wolf do battle for three days and three nights. The ground rumbled and quaked. The sky flashed with colors never before seen by the human eye. The air was filled with sounds so immense and terrible that they obliterated any and all thought, then slipped from memory as though they had never existed at all. And all the while the men and women of the village stood vigil, spears and torches in hand, never wavering and never faltering.

Finally, at the twilight of the third night, Al'Varok slaughtered Ka'Taan, rending the Bile-Wolf 's body into seventeen pieces with wrath and ferocity that the conceited goat had never before felt. Alas, in his death throes Ka'Taan struck upon Al'Varok a mortal blow, and thus did the Cyclopean Goat appear back at the village after three days and three nights in a state close to death. He dragged himself forward on his two remaining legs, his once-brilliant fur now dull and matted and his breathing shallow and weak.

He slumped there in the center of the village and knew then that he would never rise again and even the hardiest of the villagers wept openly at the sight of the beautiful Colossus rendered to such magnificent agony. But again, Al'Varok spoke to them without speaking:

Weep not, little things, for at long last my heart is full and my mind is at peace. I give my life for yours with neither hesitation nor regret.

And then the Cyclopean Goat was dead; and from his beautiful corpse there grew verdant and abundant life; a bulwark against Ka'Taan's foul emanations that poison the forest to this very day. And thus those who dwelt upon that hallowed ground came to appear in Al'Varok's image, taking on his horns and eyes both, and never did their gratitude diminish for the magnificent creature who had selflessly given his life for their own.

~ Oral History of the Voshtarri, recorded from the words of Elder Cassan Seko