Before heaven had a name and stone was born They were

And from dark and still waters They lifted this world

And lo! Gods fashioned Men and Vasrii from mud

Before war was known and first curse was found

-Opening words of Elist Scripture (II ed.)

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FALLING

GLEAMING CHARIOT

GREAT CHARIOT

WITH WHEELS OF FLAME

AND THUNDER

SMOTE BY HANDS OF ANGRY GODS

WARRING

CRASHING

THROUGH THE UPPER REALMS

LIKE FALL OF MOUNTAINS

UNTIL TIME

UNTIL SPACE

LOST MEANING

FALLING

CRASHING

A BLAZING STAR OF GOLD

AND BLUE

AND WHITE

THE GREAT SPIRE REMAINS

THE ARK BLEEDS

IT SPILLS

BUT LIVES

THE CREATION WOMB REMAINS

LORD OUR GOD REMAINS

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A great caravan of Turug is passing through wild lands, heavy carriages pulled by great-oxen, with grizzled guards looking out through windows, rifles on their backs. Sitting within the biggest carriage are Enit Melesh senior scholar-priest and leader of the expedition, alongside other scholar-priests of lower rank and a few guardsmen.

"So what the fuck are we looking for, eh?" said Alet, one of the bodyguards.

It seemed Alet got tired of the constant silence from my brothers and sisters. But once he asked, they all looked at him, as if he just punched a woman, or at least a priest. The looks on their faces were clear - 'Who are these fools they sent with us? Are we meant to explain ourselves to them?' Snot-nosed bastards. It was pretty clear they haven't worked with any kind of soldier before. Soldiers are curious as scholars and superstitious as any man, and it paid well to indulge that curiosity.

"A star fell from the heavens in the Gola mountains" Melesh explained, "Since our glorious Opion is the closest of all Fourteen, we were sent here to investigate."

The news seemed to upset the guards, as afterwards several of them made the sign of the Triad in the rough direction of the Golas, to protect themselves from the evils of the fallen star. He knew what they meant, fallen stars or comets were great omens, of war or calamity. The scholar-priests taught that the Three spoke to us from the sky and such signs were meant as warnings, prophecies of doom. Melesh himself was not so sure.

A few days later the Golas became visible, and with it their goal. Since Melesh rode the first of many carriages, he noticed it before all others. Looking at it, it was clear that whatever crashed into the mountains, turning one of them into slag, was not a mere fallen star. There was a great 'thing' embedded deeply in the ground, a vast shape that seemed to be made of gold and silver.

It seemed crooked, as if it buried itself into the mountains at an angle and then began to topple on its back. The shape roughly reminded him of an animal he has seen once at the menagerie, called a crab of the horseshoe. It even had a tail like it, though this one was a helix and tipped off with a blazing, pale light. On its right side, it had a pair of back swept horns. That evening, what we saw was the talk of the campfire. Enit heard several soldiers arguing and, of course, betting on what it was. He remained silent, deep in thought.

"It's a demon or some beast, I reckon, got wounded and fell from the heavens."

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"Nah, it's a work of them horned fuckers to the east, a palace, a city, or some warship of theirs."

"Yeah, Nubak, my cousin said that these Vasrii bastards build flying cities and palaces now. So why not a flying warship."

"But why make it out of gold, fool?"

"It hasn't fallen, it came up from underground, I tell you."

"You're all dumb fucking bastards" said Teris, the sergeant "My daughter's a scholar-priestess you know. She told me that above us there is a giant dark sea, both cold and hot at the same time. I think that's what it is - a giant lump of gold and silver, that fell from the heavens. And that's why we were sent here by our Tine, to check how much it's worth and tell the City, eh?"

It seemed that her tone silenced all discussion. Melesh chuckled to himself and went to his tent and considered it. Could that be it? Was it truly some great beast or a golden ship of the vasrii? Neither of these options seemed right, it surely didn't seem to be a natural thing, something in its look suggested artifice. Could it be a work of some other, yet unknown race from some faraway land? Head filled with all those thoughts, he drifted off to sleep.

More days passed, and finally they arrived, setting up a fort in the shadow of the Golas, with only Golan woods nearby. Melesh was looking at the strange colours that seemed to surround the base of the 'star' when he noticed movement in the woods. He called out to one of the soldiers, but when he came up the tower,neither of them could see anything.

Then something rushed out of the woods, at first they thought it was one of the giant serpents, said to live in these woods, but as it got closer it became clear it was nothing of the sort. That monstrosity was a great worm, taller than a man and roughly thirty feet in length. It slithered, crawled with uncanny speed, until it reached the wall and sat completely still.

While Melesh looked over the wall to get a better look at it, the guards prepared themselves for a fight. The monster's front was a gargantuan lump of pink flesh covered in sparse, black bristles. Its tail was several times longer and strangely colourful, he could see reds, greens, yellows, and myriad other hues, but each of them seemed to 'breathe' - they shrank and grew according to some unfelt pulse.

But the face of the beast was the most disgusting. Its forehead was swollen, protruding and below sat a great black disk - its eye. And yet below that, where a mouth should be, sat a single small orifice surrounded by puckered skin. It looked up at us with a gaze, that was at the same time mindless and damnably intelligent. It blinked once, audibly, its eye covered by a strange dilating membrane, and arched it's back. At that moment, it seemed nearly like some vast caterpillar. And then it rushed the wall, and - to their horror -broke through. Four limbs unfurled from its sides, each hairy, many-jointed and armoured. It reached out and grabbed one of the guards on the wall and began to devour him, its mouth stretching, gaping.

Other guards fired their rifles, but it ignored them, its wounds leaking strange pale ichor. Until one came up to it, and fired -once, twice - right into that loathsome eye. It split open, leaking the same pallid blood alongside more loathsome fluids and flesh. The beast then grabbed the poor man it held in its maw with all its limbs and began to pull. The worm pulled, pulled, and they screamed, as his spine snapped and his lower body flew off, crimson and mangled. It slurped his intestines, and once finished turned to the soldier beside it, paralysed with dread and grabbed her head, squeezing until a sickening crack, letting her fall to the ground, face a bloodied mess.

And then another shot hit its tail and the worm recoiled. It writhed as if it was pierced with a red-hot iron, not simple lead. Turning towards the one who shot at it - Teris!- it 'stood up' on its tail, reaching and finding purchase. It was far more brutal with her, smashing, crushing and pulping until she ceased to resemble anything. All the while, the tail writhed and wagged as if in throes of agony. Then it went over the battlements and slithered with the same uncanny speed into the woods, leaving behind a trail of red and white. No one got much sleep that night.

On the morrow, they made a small offerings from one of the hounds, and buried their fallen. Though rangers looked and looked through the woods, they couldn't find any trace of the beast. They waited inside the fort for three long days and longer nights, huddled together, each one snapping to attention for any sound.On the fourth day, it was decided they will go, investigate the star and gather some samples, afterwards returning to Opion, and warning the Tine and the nobility of the beast they encountered. As they were coming up to its base, the air was filled with a cloying stench, like rotting meat, manure and the unmistakably metallic smell of blood. The ground was cleft from the crash, filled with gashes, and cracks large enough to swallow a man.

The main 'body' was buried under dozens of feet of blackened rotting meat, interwoven with bright veins, that seemed to have spilled out from its inside. Mixed with the flesh were pieces of metal, iridescent crystals and large, broken panes of black porcelain threaded wiht gold. It's gleaming bulk towered above them, its strange smoothness broken only by multifaceted windows - or eyes. A strange thought, both mundane and chilling came to him 'Where are all the carrion-eaters?', he wondered. The more they looked at it, the more it seemed a living thing, some vast monstrosity that perished and fell from the heavens.

Everyone could feel it, so Melesh decided to lighten the mood.

"You'll probably owe money to the one that said it was alive?" he attempted to quip to the soldiers. It seemed they didn't even notice, too focused on their strange surroundings. They came back to camp, tails between their legs.

This night, it was his turn to stand guard alongside the soldiers, since he was a scholar Melesh was sent to the watchtower and told to 'Scream as loud as he can if he sees anything'. There was a strange feeling in the air, He imagined this was what it felt like if you knew you were stalked by a predator. Everyone could feel it, but no one said anything. The moon was rising slowly when he noticed it, a strange shape that seemed to hover in the air, coming towards the encampment with blinding speed.

Melesh didn't manage to scream, and it was upon them. It was a great worm, a dragon, a serpent with six elongated growths on its back. It lifted something - a staff, a wand,a sceptre- and then - light, pure white rays of light, each piercing one of the soldiers standing guard. Each fell, dead. It blazed again and again, the killing light, until all was silent. In the glow he saw it, furred, and smooth and armoured, brilliant and vivid, many armed, and writhing, everything moving, constantly, feverishly. It's head, its face, was a gash, a mass of serpents, framed by innumerable, black, lidless eyes. He hid, and yet it turned towards him, unnervingly, and then he felt it, reaching, clawing, and scraping within his mind. There was a keening sound and then darkness.

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He was in a room. A metal chamber, ribbed and veined. The walls decorated with patterns and lights and images. Thoughts came unbidden to his head:

"Where am I?"

"What am I?"

"What time is it?"

"Who am I?"

But whenever he'd try to focus on them, he would feel a pleasant warmth in the back of his head and a voice that said:

'It will all be alright.'

He looked down and felt that something was wrong. He wanted to move his ar… It will all be alright.

He didn't want to move.

Something screamed inside his head

'WHERE ARE MY ARMS? MY LEGS? WHERE IS MY SKIN?'

What were 'skin and 'arms' and 'legs'? He wonde... It will all be alright..

'It will all be alright.'

He didn't want to wonder.

Twin branches of metal grew from the ground.

A transparent light shone between them.

Someone stepped through.

It was him. But who was he?

He came up close and looked at him. His eyes were grey like ice.

"It's good to know what colour my eyes are." He thought

'It will all be alright.'

'It will all be alright.'

'It will all be alright.'

He felt an urge to smile at himself. He smiled back, too wide, too white, too many teeth.

'Everything was alright.'