Seven Sorcerers(7)

Again his designs Diminish me.

There is no escape from it.

No time to convince Those Who Listen that Lavanyia is wrong.

No time for treason.

Today there was only time to serve Zyung.

The Holy Armada would sail the wind.





2


The Shaper


What is time?

A series of curtains rippling and waving, each one a doorway into past or future. There are many futures. Often I reach for the nearest curtain and pull aside its gossamer fabric, gazing into one of these possible futures. Yet there are so many curtains exactly like this one, shrouds against futures that might be, or will be, or should never be.

At times I fail to pierce the veil of the future, and then I can only stand at the curtain and listen to the echoes of what has not yet come to pass.

What is space?

An infinite void sparkling with the energies of creation. An ocean of glimmering stardust spread across the gulf, taking on shape and form, spilling into comets and spheres and nameless singularities. Endless patterns, spinning through infinity. There are many worlds, worlds within worlds, and yet there is only the one in which I sit and contemplate the angles of possibility. This is the world I chose long ago to inhabit, revere, and sculpt into something greater.

This is my world.

Men call me the Shaper.

Yet there is another world on the other side of this one. In fact, the two worlds are one and the same, two halves of a whole. Yet in many ways they could not be more different. Until yesterday the Kings of Men and Giants did not know that another Shaper exists. I have also shown them the true shape of their world… a sphere… and given them a vision of what is to come. Yet I fear that they will not be able to withstand it.

The Old Breed came into this world when it was young. Our home was the vastness between the stars. Even I cannot remember what drove us from the infinite into the bosom of this tiny mote. We fell as thundering tempests, raging winds, and flaming meteors into the primal seas. We crafted continents and raised up the basest of organisms, birthing sentient races to worship our greatness. We toyed with these early species, casting them into terrible wars, smiling at the grim temples they erected in our honor, laughing at the mortal doom which inevitably came. The curse of Blood and Fire and Suffering. It fascinated us, this mortal delicacy, this predilection for pain and death. Sometimes we slaughtered entire empires and rebuilt them, as a child plays with stones. We reigned over an Age of Chaos.

We strode across the world as its dark Emperors, weaving histories and legends, watching them fade in the mists of time, and we grew bored. Some of us returned to the vastness of the starry gulfs, while others Diminished into the world itself. We became seas, mountain ranges, glaciers, volcanoes, and ceaseless winds. Others fell lower, taking on the forms of those we had created for our own amusement; we exploited our status as monarchs and holy beings among the young races. Tired of playing with the world and its peoples as separate entities, we became them.

And we began to forget ourselves.

Now we forged nations and empires from inside the menagerie we had built. We walked in the bodies of those who came before Men, and each time the red plague of war came and struck us low. We warred among ourselves to prove whose creations were superior. We warred out of boredom and fickle emotions. We lost ourselves in the pain and pleasure of a small existence. Now we were tied to this tiny world, and so we destroyed and rebuilt it again and again.

Now we had learned too much of mortal existence. It had changed us as surely as we had manipulated it throughout the ancient epochs. We began to forget one another, to find our own solitary places to sit and dream away eternity. But not all of us slept.

In the wake of a great slaughter, the one I call my brother came to me. We were no more true brothers than we were true Men, yet there is no other word to express our common origins. He called together the last of the Old Breed who lingered among the mortal realms. A thousand of us gathered like clouds above the plain of blood and bones where the ravens feasted.

The time has come, said my brother. Soon he would take the name of Zyung. The Earthborn have arisen, and they are not of our making. The time of chaos and destruction must end. Now it is plain to me what must be done: This world must be tamed so the Earthborn might prosper. A lasting order must be built. An ultimate domain that cannot fall, a Living Empire that will bring an end to strife and warfare. On this day I will begin shaping this world into an eternal paradise. Who will join me in the pursuit of this great dream?

These are only my memories.

They sometimes fade like night vapors in the light of dawn.

It might have happened differently.

Most of my brothers and sisters chose to serve Zyung. His Living Empire grew across the great continent. He pruned the tribes of Men as a gardener prunes a vine. His shadows cast by his bright light fell across realm after realm. Men called him their God; they conquered and slaughtered in his name.