yutzen | Entries tagged with original mythology

Once again, I return to the Burnt Hive to retrieve and compile the tales that precede us. And once again, the Hives’ oft-occlusive nature ensured it was a proper ordeal for me. No ideological squabbles this time, thankfully, and nothing I needed to prowl every Hive for, either. No, this time, what got in the way was the simple fact the average Shumhaq is irritatingly apathetic to their own history, even beyond the usual day-at-a-time Subterraneum citizen. As if looking at their founding, or the past beyond it, were a waste of time, or worse, an admission of defeat. A focus on the present is all fine and good, but I feel the need to request they cultivate some historical curiosity.
Thankfully, however, some do care. Much as their historians seemed to save their tales in an oddly resentful manner, as if writing down their grudges… And then, there were the One-Hivers. They had an abundance of useful scraps in their more incendiary material, but stripping the virulent biases off them was less than pleasant. But a source is a source, whatever their reasons to preserve may have been. Here, the result.

Do you know what death is?

It’s not an ending. A spirit might leave, or it might not, it might never be there to begin with[1]. The body stops moving, stops reacting, stops doing, but it doesn’t stop being. The only difference between a corpse and a body is what’s alive in it. But it ain’t really the start of a cycle, either[2]. Spiral, at best. That body won’t start moving again, you’ll just have it rot and get eaten up. The spirit, if any, it’ll move away from it, from us, from everything, never to come back. It’ll bring life to others, but you won’t have what you had ever again. It’ll never be the same.

What death is, then, is a split. Just like everything else. As time goes, everything splits, one thing from the next, and two things into many more. “To dust we return”, as they say, but they don’t cover just how many tiny fractures and splits it takes to bring a living being back to dust. But you might ask that, now that you’re aware of the question. And the answer is always “more than you think”. There is no true way to mend every cut to its fullest extent, something is always missing. There’s always another cut you missed. From something as simple as shattered glass, to death itself, you can never put it all back together to the way it was. Not completely.

One of the biggest reasons for that is, someone out there’s making sure those cuts stay that way.

Every separation, every severance between one thing and the rest, is looked over. Surveyed. Accounted for, along with the pieces it creates. Because whoever put it all together in one place once is done with it all, if that one ever existed, but someone needs to oversee it as it comes apart. Make sure it comes apart when it has to – not one moment before the cut, and not one moment after. And most of all, keeping the most important separations, all the important splits, the way they are. Let nothing be rolled back. Make sure it’s all dust in the end, the thinnest of dust, when all is said and done.

Why? In a way, it’s simple. Because the closest thing to where it all began, to the great pile of everything that started it all, is the thinnest, most basic, most finely sieved dust of all, where even size and weight and distance have been sliced so thin they’re hardly even there anymore. Where every last component has been separated and reduced to its minimum expression, until there’s nothing left to shed. Get all that dust together, gathered as tight as something so tiny it barely has a size can be, and all of a sudden, you have… everything, together again, at once, in a single place.

But it’s not the Surveyor[3]’s job to do that part. The Surveyor’s job is to make sure it gets there. Neatly, cleanly and properly. And most importantly, evenly.

The biggest reason why every split must remain as such, every cut unmended, is so that no one piece is bigger than the other in the end. Not one mote should outsize the other, and none of them should clump back together into something even resembling a greater, singular mass. The process is not over, and the Surveyor’s work isn’t done, until every particle, every amalgam, has been trimmed back into its separate parts. And what is an amalgam but a mass of particles that’ve tried to mend the cuts between them, in the end? Even those you’d never consider cuts because they were seemingly always there, or those that are too esoteric to consider them such at first. They may not count for you, but the Surveyor knows. The Surveyor watches, making sure even now, such mendings don’t happen.

You might wonder now how this one takes care of such things. How things are kept apart, or separated if they risk being gathering spots, focal points for one such amalgamation. You might think the Surveyor has a blade, or shears, to be wielded when something is stubbornly resisting its moment to split at last, or worse, actually mending a cut that should’ve been complete. And you would be very wrong for that assumption. Not every knife can split a stone. A knife that could do that, cannot split dust from air. And a knife that could do that, cannot split a city from its fortune, or a mother from her child, or an idea from its believers[4]. And a knife that could do that cannot split a stone, and we’re back where we began.

More importantly, a knife cannot stop most of those from coming right back together either.

So what’s the Surveyor use? Something that’s tailor-made for the split that must be done. Something forged from the materials available, which is everything. Something that will remain, and keep things split, even when it’s in a subtle way you can’t quite see. A chisel.

Sounds simple, doesn’t it? It is, yet it isn’t. Let me give you an example.

Once, it did happen, or try to. Something, someone, tried to clump things back together into one, and it was working. A grand agglomeration. One mind, barely even a mind, with an ever-growing body that just couldn’t be taken apart by those it was pulling in, devouring, assimilating. Not fast enough. Or maybe it was several bodies, joined together by a mind like strings? It was close enough to a singular thing, and it was growing quickly. Learning how to pull in everything, too. Material and immaterial. Maybe even started pulling in spirits, too. Thought as well. But it was all coming apart and becoming more of it. More mass, more of that singular mind, if you could even call it that. And when distance was there, it just stretched across it to reach what was next, and dug in too. And the bigger it got, the more it figured out how to pull in…

Nothing that was trying to survive in there, keep itself from being pulled in, was getting much done. It was just too big, there was too much of it, and anything they could take out, it’d pull right back in. Nothing to reason with either, it was just one thing, barely thinking, wanting to grow. Like a mold, if it was just a single creature, with just enough thought to reach out and grab things yet to die. And none of the cuts were deep enough to work with. All superficial, all barely trimming…

So the Surveyor went deeper. Reached into the thing’s mind, such as it was. Gathered it. Sharpened it. Made a chisel of pure thought, pure reason, pure sentience.

And drove it right through the center of this amalgam[5].

It split like glass. Cracks spread throughout it, as it started to think. As parts of it joined by these idle strings of mind started having their own thoughts. And the cracks spread further. One, to several, to millions, as whole segments started to disagree, then sub-segments, then actual individuals within the whole. And just like glass, it didn’t stop until it all came apart, as a grand amalgam, a grand thing, became nothing more than a mass of… people, with little in common between them other than some biology, and a shared experience where they couldn’t even think. No gods, no flag, no nation, just that.

And the Surveyor stepped back and looked upon a job well done. All schedules had been thrown off, things would take longer. But it was progressing as it all should. Barely even needed to intervene after that, these new peoples would do the rest of the splitting. And they did, too.

You’re wondering now why the Surveyor is so adamant. Why these splits must happen. Maybe things can’t restart properly if the balance is off. Maybe one giant amalgam of everything, biased to one side, to itself, a lattice or a blob rather than the dust it ought to be, just ain’t something you can start again with. Maybe it’ll be predictable if it’s done anyways, if it can be done at all. But we don’t know. All we know is, that’s how the Severing Surveyor works.

[1]I took care to keep the older versions of these tales and their scraps for this, and while their date was entirely uncertain those passages that alluded to spirit were entirely speculative, indicating this was before the Subterraneum made it clear such things exist. Mainly when they have nowhere to go.
[2]Soldiers of the Resurgent Hive (SRH) material actively used the word “rawark” for this, the Pact’s word for (life) cycle, and took the bother to add an immediate translation, as if to directly aim the following refutation. Every other source I found simply used the Shumhaq word.
[3]Here, terminology differs between regular and One-Hiver sources. The former uses the word “Nasharuq”, an old word descended from one of many terms for “master (crafter)”, which spawned a verb for “supervise, for approval or denial” and got retroactively altered in turn. The latter explicitly use “Druvhryk”, the word for “headsman (executioner)”. On a less charged note, all versions referred to the entity by name every time, going out of their way to avoid pronouns, and so I’ve replicated the effect here.
[4]All direct examples from the sources I had, but I had to trim them down significantly, as most of them used several more, not all of them especially functional in my eyes. SRH materials on the matter (from which I took the middle example of mother and child) seemed to delight in elaboration here, with some bitter undercurrents I didn’t find proper to include.
[5]The tone used in this and the following segment was one I tried to balance, between the stories from Shumhaq historians often taking a tone either awed or even triumphant, and those from the SRH who seemed to twist it into some manner of injustice. Not a tragedy, but seemingly something to resent the culprit for.

-Excerpt from “Who is the Lord Below? A Treatise on the Radiant and Cthonic”, authored by ‘the Ever-Restless Nirrhamidh’ (assumed pseudonym; author not yet identified and under active investigation)

Seven clans, seven banners, seven versions to make one. Indeed, the story that follows has been compiled from Bannerbound sources, much to the presumable chagrin of some of my readers in the Great Dust Gyre. To them I say: I apologize, but I know a common narrative when I see one.
If it helps, I must commend the effort each of the seven clans put into the preservation of their particular version. All the usual work of collecting the scattered scraps, combing through the dust and dirt of pre-Refuge history and scouring the embellishments of overenthusiastic or agenda-driven writers and tellers? All practically done for me before I got started. It’s preservation done right, in a way a jaded soul like me can appreciate and even celebrate. I will say: If retaining all you can of who you used to be is truly what the Seven are looking for, you are doing it right.
It’s thus almost a shame that the work I had to do was to find the parallels and common themes, and step forwards with the apparent sacrilege of weaving them into one. All I’ll say is this: Someone had to.

They say death is one of the only things we all have in common, but they barely know how right they are! It hardly matters where you were born, where you moved, where you died, and where you’ll go, everyone gets plucked off the world. And more importantly, one thing we can all agree on? We all get reaped by the same Harvester[1]. Pits, Skies and whatever else the others have, wherever you’re going, you’ll be sent on your way by the exact same fellow as everyone else. And she’ll[2] find ya anywhere and everywhere.

But is that all she is? One who lives for the job and nothing else? You would think so, and dare I say even she might have, once. But in those rare lulls between each passing? In those quiet times between wars where all flourish, or in those places where there’s nothing left to drop? In those time well before us, even? Turns out there’s a lot of time to fill. And even those diligent, stone-minded sorts who live to work have to find something to do in those bits of meantime.

Of course, someone like her took a long while to realize this. Still well before our time, but plenty had stood up and fallen by the time she started to wonder, maybe there was more to these interims than waiting. One can guess the thought caught her right as she was looking at the bones of someone she’d sent off a little later than usual, on a busy day. Maybe a catch-up sort of day. It was one of those fellas that never got sent off right, though, that one’s clear[3]. One of those fellas that scatter their bones all over her foyer, so to speak, because they came right along with the part of ‘em that mattered most. She just shooed ‘em along before that, made the lot take those bones with ‘em to whatever came next. But that one time, something must’ve happened for her to start wondering, maybe she could do something with those, with the wait ahead of her.

Quick as she is – don’t need to waste time moving when you’re already there – she’d have them tucked away before the next one came in, saving them up in some forgotten corner, some place so dead, so bereft of anything that she had to pluck it from the rest of the realm like a common soul. But the pile seemed disorderly, chaotic, didn’t seem like it was making the most of its space, so she tidied it up. Then did it again, after the thought there’d be more bones crossed her mind, they’d need to fit somewhere, may as well make them support each other! Halfway through making the base of a decent pillar before duty called again. Or at least, that’s what she saw it as when she got back to it later… How much later? Doesn’t matter. What matters is she had another handful of bones with her once she did, from another poor fool who dropped dead where no one but her would find ‘em.

Something about this caught her, practically entranced her. Maybe she finally realized there was something else other than her job and the wait. Or maybe she saw a future in these shapes she was putting together, or the potential ones in her head now that she had something to think about. But before she’d realized, she had built herself a room. A proper, actual foyer, where the metaphorical one had been. That’s the one you see in paintings[4], though she’d done work on it since then. And she thought what any of us would’ve, by then: “Maybe I could build a big house to go with this”. And so, she got started on that, and what was once a house became a manor, and then a proper Castle. Oh, she had to wait for wars to sweep across the olden lands for it, for drought and ice and plague to sweep by a few times, but sooner than she or anyone would realize, she had a Castle to herself, that would put anything we’ve built to shame. All of it from the bones of the forgotten.

As she who reaps us all took a moment of peace once the living had found accords, and the passings slowed down, she started to notice a few things amiss. For even the cleanest, most bleached of bones still have their scraps – bits of carrion, the little pests that feast on it, whispers of mourning, all wisps of clingy life. Very little of it manages to hold on when passing into her realm, but something always does when you move enough bones to dwarf even the tallest of Ironbound Keeps[5]. These scraps of rot and life had piled on enough that she could see figments of actual life in her realm, skittering and wandering the halls, taking shape little by little as it found more to shape itself. And the more scraps they found, the closer each little wisp could get to becoming something…

And it fascinated her. As someone who’d seen life come and go, but never stay, the keeper of a threshold where no one lingered more than a few moments, the idea of having something in her realm even remotely close to alive was thrillingly new. She had something to look forward to beyond her job now! Even if every realm fell, and her work came to an end, there would be something still!

So she committed to these collections, these architectures, more than ever before. She looked forwards to those neglected souls that weren’t sent off right, because there would be more for another Castle, one greater than the last. More scraps for the entities that slowly came to be within these structures. Now even a simple delay could mean she’d get there before the mortals could do their part, and rake as much of life’s detritus as she could into her ever-greater foyer.

Well, it paid off. Castle after Castle arose by her hands, each far greater and more luxurious than the one before it – luxurious as bone can be, at least. But when the time came to assemble her next masterpiece, with a bundle of ivory where her shears usually were, she turned around and found there was no room. She’d gotten deeply invested in these Castles when there was no harvest to pursue, that she had utterly filled her own liminal realm. It seemed so utterly empty once, she never thought it would happen!

Then she looked back towards mortal lands. Not towards those places where all the dying had been done – those were hers already – but those that were almost there. Those that just needed a few more lives to go, a little push, and they would be right in her realm, too dead to contest. She turned her gaze towards one island in particular, surrounded by so many, greater than the rest and yet so much emptier, with but a few souls still standing upon it.

She reached for her shears once more.

And just like that, the island was gone[6].

The Castle she built after that was magnificent, and perhaps the liveliest of all. After all, it had come pre-inhabited, hadn’t it? And there was still plenty of room left for more. She had the ideas, too, the grand architecture for the next one whirling together in her immortal mind. All she needed was material.

You wonder why we take all the time and measures with the dead, no matter who? Strangers on the roads, enemies slain by our hand? You ever asked yourself why we bothered? This is why.

[1]An aggregated sort of translation from various different terms, with most referring to one whose job is to cut down and gather crops once grown and ready. Zau and Issouf are exceptions, both going with something closer to Gardener, with emphasis on trimming rather than reaping. In this, I am afraid I had to resort to the majority “vote”.
[2]Most of the seven Clans (Zau, Heese, Norrish, Vesnor) refer to this Harvester by female pronouns and terminology, while the remaining ones either use gender-neutral terms (Vesh, Issouf) or go far out of their way linguistically to not bring the matter up at all (Sofize).
[3]A branching point, with every clan referring to a different funerary method as the proper, loss-less way to send off the dead; all of them either permanently confine or destroy the body entirely. Levels of acceptance for other methodologies varied, but non-Clan methods were generally seen as passable, just not ideal.
[4]There are no less than 15 known artworks by the title of Atrium of the Harvest in the history of the Urul Peaks Clans and their predecessors, and it receives repeated mention and description in their fiction. Descriptions and details vary wildly beyond the ample use of bone, and even individual clans don’t have a unified vision of how it would look.
[5]Similar terminology is used in Bannerbound language to refer to the Ironbound Keep that gives their capital its name. The way it’s used seems to imply Ironbound Keeps were a class of fortification outright, and while the one the Seven currently occupy is the greatest of all, it’s by no means the only one (assuming, of course, that the ones in their realm still stand).
[6]This coincides with certain tales from Sofize, Norrish and Vesnor about “Azure Barrens”, a patch of water at the center of an archipelago where no wind stirred the waves, and where by all metrics there should be land, but they couldn’t find any. Given the current glacial state of the Urul Peaks realm, I imagine it’s become something of a moot point since then.

The following tale has been compiled as best as I could manage from every fragment I could identify within the various libraries of Ishiss (city and nation). I will readily admit the experience was both thrilling and immensely frustrating: Individual fragments have been well-known for quite some time already, but a number of minor yet notable contradictions prevented the rise of a true compendium, as leading figures I shall not be naming made mutually incompatible versions and declared theirs the most truthful, actively attacking others over assumed lack of veracity. I have done all I could to smooth over the contradictions and provide something closer to a definitive version, fully expecting to draw critique from the aforementioned figures for making such a claim. To them I would like to say: Go ahead. I have so much to tell you.
The various fragments were delightfully well preserved despite dating to pre-Refuge times, thanks to the Ifchi’s sturdy paper-making techniques, but different interpretations of their contents only multiplied with time, obfuscating matters that should’ve been far simpler. If any further fragments show up beyond their Exit, I will be retrieving them personally this time.

Many a thread can be drawn between water and life. Both have been so tightly linked as to be synonymous throughout our existence; even those that thrive far from water will always need to carry some with them, and even the most sun-baked peoples must eventually return to it. But more importantly, more relevantly, many a thread can be drawn between water and Being[1] as a whole, not just for that which breathes and moves. As we and all others are shaped from water, Being is not just a state, but a fundamental part of all we know, the bottom-most building block. For all that lives, for the stone beneath our feet, for the air that surrounds us all, and even water itself. Even the emptiness beyond, the void that holds seemingly nothing, is in itself held up by Being; if it wasn’t, nothing could occupy it, for it would not be there at all[2].

The threads hardly end there. Much like water, Being is a limited thing. Just as water bodies of all kinds are surrounded by dry land and by empty air, made scarce in every direction, all Being is strung out in one body after another, hardly ever connected, held up by nothing, pressed down on by nothing, surrounded by nothing at all. True nothingness, that cannot be pushed aside so easily by anything that Is – not without intent, motivation, actual force that such masses of Being cannot usually muster by themselves. And just like water, Being can slowly fade into its surroundings, seemingly dissipating into nothing – except in this case, the nothing is very much literal. Being can slowly seep into the rest, too thin to hold or even be anything, too disperse to do anything more than exist. And just like murky pools in the mud, drying in the sun and steaming away into thin air, the thinner it’s strung, the quicker it can all fade away. Leaving nothing but vapors and cracking earth – or nothing at all, as the case may be.

But what of those that dwell in these pools? Are they to go quietly, dry out and die under the scour of these merciless surroundings? One of the big differences, the proper differences, is in the scale. With puddles strung across the mud, you hardly have much in them. At most, a few striders, a few dozen bogmites, anything beyond the hundred would be too small for the eye to see. Being, however? Even the tiniest drop, barely worth remarking on, could hold millions and millions like us, only vaguely aware the very foundation of their existence is vanishing with every passing year. You and I[3] are not even bogmites at such grand scales, and we are even more helpless in the face of such drying-up than they would be.

There are, however, those that aren’t us. And of them, there is one out there that we know is not helpless.

A curious entity, one that lives in nothingness yet needs Being to thrive. A wandering sort, never staying long in one spot, whether it Is or not. A creature of opposites, one that could only come to exist in the quagmire that occurs where existence and nonexistence meet. In this, and acknowledging its shape would be unclear to us all, I would compare it to a toad[4]. Skipping from pool to pool, diving and digging alike, sifting through the mud made by Being. And just big enough to change the very landscape around it, little by little, one shovel of its webbed limbs at a time.

And change the landscape it does. Just as a creature that is neither of earth alone, nor pure earth, would know best how to shape the places were both meet, this entity can shape its own quagmire with greater results than anything of singular nature. Neither[5] a creature of nothingness alone, Nor[5] one of Being like us, it alone can carve the grand, yet precise shapes it desires into the murky puddles that shape everything. And so it does, with every passing eon, seemingly dedicating all of its endless time to molding this swamp of existence to its own desires.

But what would such a creature desire? What manner of wants could a being so far beyond our comprehension even have, that we could understand? The answer is uncertain, but if I were to take the simplest guess, it would be: Preservation.

Preservation of what, you ask? Hard to answer. It could be its own life, keeping an environment it prefers, or perhaps there is something else to it. Perhaps it is aware of smaller beings like us. We only know what it does: When one of the pools of Being is running thin, when it seeps away into the nothingness, spreading into thin vapors unable to hold even the tiniest smidge of existence, this creature, this keeper of the quagmire, starts carving away the edges that keep it trapped in place, and lets all the Being held within flow freely, away in directions we could not perceive. What forces actually move these flows, we don’t know either, but we know exactly where it leads: To a greater pool.

For the comparison holds, as I said before: Greater masses of Being, much like greater bodies of water, do not dissipate nearly as quickly, and the deeper they go, the longer they can last. And the toad in charge will merge the unfortunate pools of existence into greater ones, forming ever greater bodies of Being dotting the nothingness beyond. Less of them, for sure, pooling their minuscule inhabitants together, forcing them to adapt, but perhaps it’s the price to pay in the face of oblivion – that is, if it even knows they’re there.

How long has it been doing so, one wonders? How many pools of Being have been merged, and come close to drying out again before having to be merged, again and again? Whole worlds blended into one, with their individual strings of history knotted into a singular rope, one by one? Is it perhaps doing this without aim, simply forming ever greater bodies, intervening only when they threaten to dry? Or is there a greater lake of Being somewhere deep, towards which it channels every last trace of existence so that it may last? Perhaps it’s the first of these answers that’s the most important of all. For it would determine the rest, wouldn’t it? If it’s been going long enough… all that’d be there would be scattered puddles, channeled through ever-greater distances into a grand, yet shallow lake, all that’s left of so many different masses of Being. Then again, it may not be so shallow, but the toad is never truly sated with its size. We simply do not know. All we can do is speculate…

And speculate we will. For however long this has been going on, the only thing we know is that it’ll continue. Perhaps until the end of time, when all dries up, even the biggest of all pools, and it’s forced to concede, roll over and die… But I wouldn’t think so. As I said, all Being that dissipates into the nothingness around it? It’s never truly gone. It’ll grow thick with existence, perhaps thick enough to start holding entities again, even if just the smallest of all. Perhaps Being shall coalesce, as the apparent end draws near, and the keeper of this quagmire has but the smallest puddle, the very last inches of a well, to itself…

Perhaps, just like the toads we know, all it needs to do is hold on until the rains come. And perhaps then, as the great string of puddles and pools is reformed, as the cracked earth of nothingness returns to a quagmire of its liking under the storm, it shall finally rest… While the rains last, at least.

[1]Direct translation from the word shurrif, which can double as noun (existence) and verb (to exist, to be), while acting as antonym to the word frush (nonexistent, not real). Every fragment insisted in using it as a noun, with context aiding the translation, and I have capitalized each proper use of the translated word for clarity’s sake.
[2]If these passages seem more reiterative than they should, I apologize; part of the problem in compiling the tale from its fragments was that different sources often neglected passages and comparisons that others did use, and completeness’ sake demanded I weave them all together.
[3]Unusually, between the fragments I collected, this was the most common, most possible translation. More curiously, not once did I find anything resembling an address to the reader, or the author referring to themselves as a writer; the closest I could find was something that would translate to “my dear interlocutor”, which both hints that these were once meant as transcripts, and baffles me as something anyone would deliberately speak, let alone write down.
[4]An astounding number of fragments attempted to specify species-wise, rather than leave it at a more recognizable level. I have opted for the latter, rather than fall into the “scholarly” squabbles of trying to pinpoint individual manners of batracian. Again, all objections on this particular matter can be presented publicly, and I will welcome each and every one.
[5]Unusually, the word I translated to “Neither” here often refers to a manner of temporary Exit-like gate to either a distant spot within the same realm, or more rarely, another realm, requiring an individual to “embody” it to function. Said individuals cause an overlap between areas, being “neither here nor there”, hence the colloquial name. While further elaboration is beyond the scope of this volume, the term does not seem to apply 100% here. But the parallels should be clear, and I chose to capitalize “Nor” as well to reflect this.

-Excerpt from "Who is the Lord Below? A Treatise on the Radiant and Cthonic", authored by 'the Ever-Restless Nirrhamidh' (assumed pseudonym; author not yet identified and under active investigation)

This particular tale will upset some of my most avid, yet quietest readers, of this I am sure. For its origins are less than certain, contested between the Burnt and Bellbound hives, and the resulting struggles of ownership have whittled it down to uselessness with revisions and accusations within their respective territories. I find this contrary to the pursuit of knowledge as a whole, to the point I will throw caution to the wind and state the Bellbound should be ashamed for letting it reach such low points. Any who object to my statement may come to me, as they surely know my dwelling by now, and I wish to tell them my grievances in person for once.
Nevertheless, the following tale’s origin is as obfuscated as the Hives’ own, and I could find nothing I could satisfactorily call an original. Instead, I was forced to piece it together from different translations in different languages, acquired all across the caverns and compiled together into a single version. I suspect Bellbounds (that's the Nirhaq, for those not yet aware) that objected to the aforementioned squabble much like I did spread these out by themselves, but that is beyond the scope of this volume.

While it remains obvious to any denizen of the Subterraneum with any sense of where they stand, even before taking refuge many of its now-dwellers had found that there are many realms beyond their own. Philosophers and scholars of reality itself often found ways to peer past the assorted veils, and find the existences beyond. Of course, in trying to reach such sights, most of them became familiar with what separated them. They saw where all they knew came to an end, giving way to a thick nothingness, separating them from all others… And they found the thin, thin layer keeping it all out. For everything we know is but another bubble, adrift in a sea few could ever cross. A million, million bubbles, all floating freely in an ocean[1] with neither surface nor bottom…

All except one.

There is a singular bubble of existence, greater than any other, with the thickest walls of all keeping its being within, and the weight of nothingness outside. A perfect bubble, a flawless sphere, which – whether as coincidence or as an anchor to the rising archipelago[2] of bubbles in every direction – lies in the perfect center of it all, its own center matching that of everything. It is the First and Greatest[3], the most Perfect of all, perpetual and unassailable.

And utterly, unquestionably empty, once.

Nothing spawned within it, no life to grow and thrive, no land to be carved by age and water, nothing within but the walls and the darkness. It was not until bridges could be tended from other bubbles that anyone at all saw such perfect emptiness for what it was…

And it was perfect. Utterly different from the nothingness outside, which crushed the chance of anything at all coming to pass. This was a void full of potential, a place that could hold anything, and had so little within it that even just a word or a thought could make a lasting mark upon it… And with its perfect shape, and the perfect walls surrounding it that could not be pierced by anything, such words and ideas could remain for a long time, bouncing off the walls in a similarly perfect echo if spoken in the right tone, reigniting their idea with every pass. With nothing to dampen them as they echoed across the interior, and nothing to lose with each bounce upon walls that seemingly received nothing, and pushed back everything. With the right words and dedication, one could bring anything to pass, feeding the echo as it passed each time, hitting the right cadence and tone each time[4]…

But as always, it only took one fool to set off its ruin.

Whoever pushed the first pebble in this avalanche that haunts us to this day, we don’t know. It was lost to time, if not rightfully wiped from it. We just know this emptiness had gathered a crowd, an actual settlement, by the time said individual raised their voice and called out the presence of a monster that wasn’t there. Cried out in fear, most likely feigned, that some indescribable destroyer was out for their life, and that of others. Yelled that it was a powerful beast, an outright abomination that could tear down anything and anyone…

And so it began. Just one voice to contaminate it all, its echoes bouncing back upon themselves, resonating with themselves, and with the ideas they brought in this utter emptiness that wouldn’t let them dissipate. Slowly, something began to take form, the faintest outline of a being that embodied this long-forgotten person’s claims… And yet, with such lofty claims, even this outline could kill, well before it could have a proper shape. Weaved together from the shouts that made it be, this unseen, phantasmal nightmare reached out and tore down their settlement, one stone-rending screech at a time. No one saw if it was clawing at them or striking with any limbs at all, all anyone knew was that where it screamed, homes crumbled, and their dwellers were rent apart.

Then, panic reigned. Monster, those attacked called out. Destroyer, they screamed out as they ran. Abomination, they cried as they witnessed their fellows slaughtered without warning[5]. What was just one voice quickly became an unwitting choir, feeding and strengthening the thing that’d come to pass. The thing would grow with their panic, drawn in by their cries, and so grew its reach and bloodshed, which spurred the horrified masses further into disarray…

Those who knew what was happening tried to intervene, but they had no contingencies. They never thought something like this could happen, that anyone would even think raise a false alarm just to create its own disaster. They knew to deaden the panic, but did exactly the wrong thing to achieve it. “There is no monster”, they tried to say, but the word “monster” was still heard. “This destroyer is but a hoax, a lie”, they repeated, but “destroyer” lingered on. “This abomination was made up, it doesn’t exist”, they shouted out, but only the word “abomination” survived, all the rest drowned and washed away in the echoes. They realized moments too late that to refute an idea, it had to be brought up, and that was enough in this perfectly malleable existence to make it real, irrefutable. And so, the thing’s existence was only stoked further by their mistakes and they, too, were rent apart.

In moments, it had become clear that wherever it saw chaos and horror, it and its bone-shattering screeches would follow… And soon, it hardly even needed to sow them by itself to know where to reach out and strike. The ideas and words that had brought it to life within moments would resonate with its existence, even if their origins had nothing to do with it, and they would call it forth. This formless thing was soon reaching well across the bubble’s confines, one side to another, to wreak its havoc in places where even one person had expressed a hint of fear, spoken about a monster – any monster – or fretted that a given barrier wouldn’t hold. And once it had reached there, it remained, its own rending shrieks joining the echoes that made it and fueled its wrath…

Soon enough, nearly everything that wasn’t it was gone. Even the very emptiness that once filled this perfect bubble was now just more of it, and the ever-rebounding echoes. Every corner was just another part of it, as its sound filled the void. The very walls became filled with its existence, as the screams soaked into once-impermeable barriers; they simply let it in, muffled yet undeniable, long before they could be cracked by its intensity, even if they never truly let it through. And in being filled with its presence, it’s essence, the walls that formed this bubble became yet another part of the formless monstrosity that but one voice had spawned. This Perfect Bubble had been swallowed whole by its existence… And it found it couldn’t tear the Bubble down. The thing couldn’t breach its own immaterial form with its own screams, couldn’t reach walls that were now inside it, and so, the echoes that formed it would never stop ringing, and would never be truly released…

But now that just enough of it had crept into the walls, it could still resonate with the outside, and listen. Terrified, familiar cries in languages it never knew, from peoples it had never met, in contexts no one it killed would’ve imagined. Monster. Destroyer. Abomination. Fear of things that come to tear down one’s abode without warning, unseen and unstoppable. All of this and more… In other bubbles, across the true nothingness.

And so, its reign of mindless terror would continue. What was once the Perfect Bubble was now but a destroyer of realms. And when, in some unfortunate bubble, the fearful murmurs of end-bringing beasts become loud enough to be overheard? The thing will reach out, stretching the walls that have become its body, and rend the source apart. Those within the realm are either swallowed by the crushing nothingness, or are scattered across its remnants, naught but thin suds spread in every direction… And sometimes, subsumed into the once-perfect bubble that both holds and is their hunter, as the suds merge with it like any bubble would.

Irony of ironies that those within are perhaps the safest of all, in spite of being buffeted to and fro by the maddening echoes of the one who tried to slaughter them…

[1]At least three translations referred to it as a lake, but I have gone with ocean, as those languages with a distinction between lake and ocean inevitably used the latter.
[2]Direct translation from an Ishissi text, as other languages inevitably resorted to more general terms like “collection” (with one baffling Urul translation referring to them as “hill range”, which I decided against). Unusually (and for those who don’t grasp it), the Ishissi language does have a word for a collection of bubbles, but no texts ever resorted to it pre-Nixian Age.
[3] Not every translation related to this part referred to it as either, let alone both, but I found none that outright contradicted it.
[4]All texts coincided in these terms, usually reserved for music and sound as a whole, no matter the translation. If there was any error in translation or transcription, it happened far before the story was spread far and wide, and even those mutilated versions in Bellbound/Burnt spaces contain such terms.
[5]The three words presented here found their own repetition in each translation, yet still differed between different languages, with very clear marks of imperfect translation from an original language. I use these terms as the closest I could find in the common tongue. Ironically, the most precise versions of the word I could find were from Bellbound texts that had otherwise been massacred.

-Excerpt from "Who is the Lord Below? A Treatise on the Radiant and Cthonic", authored by 'the Ever-Restless Nirrhamidh' (assumed pseudonym; author not yet identified)

(another from the archive, not a prompt story this time. Another go at experimenting with creation myths, this time blatantly grabbing Norse and twisting it. Apologies.)

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"The following was retrieved from Voska Empire performers; I compiled the details of multiple versions together as best I could, but the main structure and figures of the story were provided by the Trimak Brothers’ Troupe, who, to my judgment, had the most solid versions. I say versions, plural, because each of the three provided me with a slightly different version and refused to offer any input on which one was closest to the original, finding the very idea “absurd”.
Nevertheless, the patterns of variation indicate this story was passed on as verbal tradition from the start, with almost all physical artwork on the matter (such as murals, runic markings and so on) seemingly left behind during the Toskars’ Refuging; what’s left often references specific figures in oblique manners. However, as incursions into the Downpour continue, reports on said artwork may come by me, which will be reported alongside any relevant findings in the next edition of this work."

Beyond the our land’s[1] horizon, far beyond anything our eyes could see, a great Kavru[2] tree stands.

A tree of heights we cannot yet conceive, a tree where each and every leaf is another horizon, but a tree nonetheless, with roots, seeds and bark like any other. It is upon its branches that our domain, and so many others, rest, swaying in the winds from beyond. Our land rests upon a single twig of countless many, a twig greater than the sky, so vast even reaching the branch it’s born from would take you and me a million lifetimes. And yet, this Tree of Horizons is such that the closest world to ours, the nearest leaf, is so far into the distance not even the sharpest of eyes would ever see it. Entire lands aloft, unreachable and unseen to us, forming the green of its titanic crown.

We are not alone upon this tree either, even outside the worlds. Insects fly and crawl to it, like they would with any other tree, shaping a realm of their own in unimaginable scale. It has its colorful fliers[3], flitting from flower to flower to feed on its offerings. It has its sap-suckers[3], poking into bark and leaves to drain the faintest traces of lifeblood from its veins. And of course, there’s the myriad crawlers and slitherers[3], for which the Tree of Horizons is just a refuge, a place of solace from the forces that lie beyond.

These are creatures far beyond us, even in their simplest of acts they could tear our nation apart without realizing it; they would barely even know we exist. In their feeding, they may often breach the Horizons, sucking the life out of entire worlds to sate their hunger without ever knowing who dwelled on them. They may also nourish them, spreading gifts from flower to flower, letting the leaves nearby swell with vitality in turn… But most of all, in their aimless wandering, they oft step upon the worlds, rattling them in their passage, and each world handles such jostling very differently. From a simple, slithering passage to the battle of two great horned suitors, the Realms must handle their passing in whichever way works best. And throughout it all, they would know nothing of us… And if they ever did, we would get no sign of it. Such is the life that surrounds every tree, even the ones we know.

But there is one more creature, quite unlike the rest. Neither a crawler, nor a flier, nor a slitherer, but a tunneler[4], that never once touches the live bark of the Tree of Horizons, for it doesn’t need to.

How would such a thing work, you ask? You see, every tree needs soil to grow upon, and the Tree of Horizons is no exception. We will never know its expanse, not in a billion lifetimes, but we know the soil runs very deep indeed… Deep enough to bury and conceal the ancient, putrid log of another, long-dead tree[5], far enough into the earth that the live roots won’t touch it.

This log has been buried there since the Tree of Horizons was young, and the old tree that it once was… Why, that could’ve been there eons before whatever pit that sprouted it was laid to rest. It no longer holds Horizons of its own, and one can only imagine the thousands, if not millions of realms that once adorned its long-dead branches. In its heyday, it may have been greater than even our Tree; such is its size that even the putrid pockets of rotting wood within are greater than any world, living off the decay rather than the nourishing sap of a living tree. Just the flakes of bark that slough off its surface into the dirt could sustain entire civilizations for centuries on end. It is because of this log that the Tree of Horizons is as lively as it is, growing on the rich soil left by its decay. For the wood and sap that sustain and feed entire worlds… Why, such things are too lively to simply disappear.

But this old tree, or what’s left of it, has no visitors, and only one inhabitant that anyone knows of. A tunneler, as I said, sifting through the ground around it and making sure it rots away as it should. An endless, coiling Worm, carving holes into the trunk and scraping off the rotting wood. An unfathomable creature, feeding off the putridity of ages long past so that the Tree may be fed in turn. The log will be there for ages upon ages, slowly eaten away by time and the Worm, until there is nothing left but soil to feed the tree – at least, if the Tree of Horizons lives that long to begin with.

However, the Worm is there for all that dies, as Worms are wont to do, and the old log isn’t the only thing it feasts on. In fact, it has a certain taste for fresh death, for that which has only recently passed on, and even that which is merely dying… Such as those unfortunate leaves that fall from the Tree of Horizons. Whether plucked or dried off their branch by meddlesome insects, or done in from the worlds they hold within them, their fall calls to the tunneler beneath, who rushes through the soil to devour the leaf that’s fallen, returning it to the earth, along with all within it…

Or rather, most within it. For this Worm, too, is far too huge to take any particular notice of us. And if it ever noticed us, it has never given any sign of such. Its feast is a chaotic process, breaching barriers and scattering fragments all about. The once-unbreachable Horizon is pierced by its countless teeth and bottomless hunger… And those within it that are willing and able, those that can cross the vast distances in time and find the right places to escape? Said fortunate souls can climb upon its skin, and if they latch on firmly enough, ride their way out of the End. Away from the Tree of Horizons, away from their devoured world, and into the soil, dragged off by their unwitting steed.

What happens to said souls is a question that remains unanswered. But we know the Worm will return to the old log soon enough to continue its ancient task, never once knowing how many passengers it carried on its hide. The rotten pockets within must be so utterly different from every realm that still rests upon the living tree, that one wonders if they could even survive in there, let alone thrive. But… Perhaps they do. Perhaps there is just enough of every dead leaf that once held an entire world, strewn about and infused into the very soil. Perhaps there is enough life in the old, wooden carcass yet, the same life that sustained entire realms, to hold such refugees just a little longer. We may never know.

All we know is, if such survivors existed… They would be living on the blind spots of giants, much as we are. And while you may think such an existence is disgraceful, feeding off the rot of what was once alive and grand… We have no room to question, for the Tree of Horizons, to which we owe our very existence, is much the same.

[1]Recitations by figures I was able to identify date this story to pre-Subterraneum times
[2]Species of tree; most biological and anatomical details were lost, but I was able to find references to them growing to great size, as well as a certain resemblance to Pyrefeather
[3]I translated here from specific species names to more recognizable categories; different versions often used different species
[4]Direct translation
[5]While a few versions specify this is another Kavru tree, well over three fourths either didn’t specify or outright stated it was an unknown species.

-Excerpt from "Who is the Lord Below? A Treatise on the Radiant and Cthonic", authored by 'the Ever-Restless Nirrhamidh' (assumed pseudonym; author not yet identified)

(another one from the archive, this one an experiment in trying to make some original mythology. Part of a series I intend to expand later. Also a prompt story, this time provided by Impressions of Detail at Cohost. I'll miss 'em in particular)

A lightning-scarred temple, dedicated to the overthrow of every God

"The following story came from Ferigozi sources; the version presented is sourced mostly from Romíz of Vilavendi, with a few adjustments of my own to include details found in other versions.
The various retellings of this story were retrieved with unusual levels of fidelity thanks to pre-Refuging carvings keeping the details relatively straight in comparison to others, and presumably allowing the verbal tradition to remain fresh as newer generations had reasons to ask. Very few such carvings appear to have survived, however, thanks to the tale being spread by a highly radical faction within pre-Subterraneum society, which blended into the rest upon collapse and refuge. One can can only speculate on how many versions of the story were lost during the turmoil that followed.
As with most myths, and nearly every tale I've compiled in this volume, attempting to track down the true origin of this tale has been impossible so far."

Before our time, before our beginning, before anything we know... there was nothing. And before there was nothing? There was a time and a land, utterly different from ours and yet so alike in many ways. With peoples who perhaps labored and frolicked like we do, may have loved and warred like we do, and spread across whatever world they had to themselves, in such distant times. Who perhaps rose to a peak of strength we could hardly understand, reached heights well beyond anything we've known. And, in the end, who either saw their downfall little by little as their world left them behind, or saw it fall apart around them and collapse, taking them with it into nothingness... Leaving nothing behind, either way.

Or rather, almost nothing. But we will get to that.

Like many of us, these peoples had Gods of their own, and in that time, that meant far more than it does now. A whole, outlined pantheon born of them, of the land itself, of every concept and every rule that made their world what it is. A willful place it was, far more than ours, where their power and influence was felt far more than anything we ever saw. Anything that could be revered, that could be served but never ruled, would find itself represented, embodied outright. Concepts could be whole courts of deities, each aspect bestowed a name, a mask and a will, all of them ruled by the one that represented the whole. And the people of such a land, their creators and subjects alike, would have to bow, and pay their respects, lest these beings with perfect control of their domain turn it against them.

No one knows how long this order lasted, but it couldn't have been long. With deities both kind and cruel, orderly and fickle, lenient and tyrannical, all vying for the same people. All demanding tribute, sometimes especially if it meant spiting another... We know that, eventually, the realm was overburdened by their dominion. Too many divine rulers for the people to appease, with whims and rivalries that came and went ensuring one or another would always be displeased with those below. And there is only so much a people can take before resentment starts to brew... And with it, ideas.

It began with yet another squabble between gods. Two domains opposed, and their worshippers caught in the middle, unable to sate both. Which ones, no one remembers anymore; what's important is that someone snapped that day, and wondered if the only way out of these dilemmas would be to end one of the two parts. At that stage it was near-unthinkable, it might've even been a joke, a less-than-serious vent, but as soon as the very idea passed through their minds, the very moment this very pointed anger settled into a concept... It got a mask and will of its own.

They called him the Lord Defiant. His was a mask of chiseled bone - sometimes bleached blank, sometimes carved with swirling patterns - and his will was with the people, demanding only they stand rather than bow, even if it was against him. He stood against rules and law, and the more hidebound they were, the more ferocity he showed them... He was of Defiance, of Rule-breaking, of Transgression... And in this world, where the rules of nature had divine avatars, where the laws of reality and the gods that enforced them were oft one and the same, he found it easy to take the mask of Deicide itself.

From there, it snowballed; As with any new idea, as soon as one gave form to something that'd been unthinkable just moments ago, it grew roots that wouldn't budge - and in a world where such an idea had a face and a voice, said roots grew quickly and deeply. And once the people knew the concept was real enough to be represented, those that had been tyrannized the most quickly knew exactly who to back.

It was when the Lord Defiant let those that followed him breach the laws themselves that war became inevitable. When those under him could harness the gifts of other gods, that had not granted them to those outside their circle, let alone servants of this upstart. When those closest to him managed to combine said gifts, and forge together new powers and methods from components whose lords despised each other. It is said that the true point of no return was when fire and water were made to work together in one place, in one single arrangement, achieving things not yet dreamed of... That was when it began.

With ever-growing numbers on his side, and his own nature as the very breach of the laws wielded against him, the Lord Defiant and his many followers stood their ground for a long, long time. But the others never stopped; even seeing their fellow divines die in the battlefields, felled by what should be their followers, and the world around them warping and cracking to accommodate the shift, only incensed them more and drove them to fight with ever-greater ferocity. And in the end, with their numbers and their power, they earned themselves a bloody victory...

But when the time came to execute him, the Lord of Death refused, stating it simply: What would stop this lawless being from breaching their laws as well, teaching how to do so, and returning himself to their realm with all the other dead in tow?

And so, the gathered gods decided to imprison him instead. The Lord Defiant was restrained in the depths of his shattered temple, where all their stolen gifts had been wielded by unworthy hands. Layers upon layers of seals, each crafted and put in place by a different divine, were layered through the walls, through wood and stone, each made as unbreakable as they could manage. When they ran out of temple, in turn, they were forced to construct further walls, and the pillars to sustain them, just to support every seal and lock they wished to put between them and the Defiant one. Even as they worked, these pieces of prison twisted themselves to match the house of worship within...

But it worked. Each of the gods did theirs best to bar the prisoner from their own gifts, so that he may never escape, no matter where he intended to go, and no matter how long he had to attempt it. It never truly barred his influence, of course, as even afterwards the people could still find themselves twisting gifts not meant for them, when they stood tall enough... but the Lord Defiant remained there, for the rest of eternity.

And remains there still. For the Lord of Death layered the thickest seals of all, barring him from an ending, fearing that death would be but another avenue of escape to the upstart prisoner. The realm collapsed into dust and nothingness, the pantheons fell one by one, and the masks were ground under the foot of Time and Death, before they, too, came to an end themselves... but not the Lord Defiant, who had been barred from both. The perfect prison doubled as the perfect fortress, and within, he defied the End itself with gifts that weren't his own.

It is said this temple, this prison, tumbles across eternity to this day, the one remnant from the last time around. He is yet to breach it, and perhaps he never will, but his whispers still do... And it is said that, sometimes, when the people of today stand tall enough, defying the higher powers, defying the very end of everything... he reaches out, and aids them.

-Excerpt from "Who is the Lord Below? A Treatise on the Radiant and Cthonic", authored by 'the Ever-Restless Nirrhamidh' (assumed pseudonym; author not yet identified)