Jiieden

OOC: I've posted here before, and indeed, even posted an earlier version of the very same work. But I felt it worth doing it again, to see if the feedback I got previously (which was helpful) has changed at all. And I've added as a special bonus the first small bit of the actual story, to see if it has a strong enough draw. Also, does it follow fairly well enough from the prologue, or is it too radically different? Criticism along those lines would be appreciated (though any feedback at all is appreciated, actually)....Oh, and it is fantasy.

There first was light, the holy infinite Expanse. With the light came perfection. The world was elegant in its simplicity, such a simple paradise. The gods played amongst the light, and laughed and shouted with joy in their creation, which had taken them an age to complete. They had found their haven, their heaven; they named it Ida. There was no night or day; just an endless horizon of flawless beauty.

The sky was azuline, reflecting the mirror still seas.

But time passes, as time must.

And with time comes change – immediately it woke the god Shotumei. The sheer revelry of his existence sluiced from him, and like a whale surfacing from some deep place, he awoke. He remembered, and then he knew horror. He knew that Ida had been found by the great evil the gods had once fled, and immediately he ran again. Forever more he was known as the Abandoner of Hope, the Betrayer and his name was later cursed by men – what coward would run so soon? But the enlightened say he was wise, for any change from heaven is a change towards hell.

Following his disappearance, the nameless evil came to Ida. Clouds and rain and then lightning and thunder ripped apart the blue skies. Ida was thrown into darkness, so black it destroyed the hearts of many gods forever, for no god can live without light. The world put on a raiment of black death, and the perfection of Ida was shattered.

The gods stayed and struggled against their ancient enemy, and once more they wrought their magic, bringing forth fountains of light, and stars and suns. This new light, though it shone with the hope of the gods, died also, snuffed out like a wick smothered. Only two godly jewels remained to define day and night, circling Ida, illuminating it - their greatest works, the suns Reya and Soth. Slowly, the darkness faded, and the evil rotted away, downward, into the heart of blasted Ida. The twin suns were allowed to shine.

Their new light revealed the storm wracked skies and broken seas. There was complexity, a million shattered deviations from the still perfection. Day served only to destroy hope, for by day the world’s scars were visible, taunting the gods, baiting them with their second failure. The world’s core was as a worm eaten apple, hollow, wasted and corrupt. The gods, petty, were angered, and forced to vengeance.

They attempted to slay the great evil that had wrapped itself around their world’s core, but they failed, leaving only new scars upon Ida to mark their futile efforts. After millennia of conflict, many had died, their ids fatally wounded by the impossible task. The gods that lived forsook their creation, and ran, across the star scattered sky and into the night. Again a time passed, and the darkness left also, the world consumed, an empty husk. It followed those who had fled, again searching them out among the black infinity. Only one yet remained on all Ida, for she was the very soul of the world, and her woe was such that nothing could comfort her.

She was Gaea, the World Goddess, and her heart had been broken.

Alone, she watched and wept, left only with the poisonous memory of a perfection forever lost. She walked Ida alone, healing the greatest wounds, tending the world’s memories and empty lands.

For company she crafted creatures to walk the earth, where gods once stood. Humans, plants and animals – all these, she wove into existence. They brought new beauty to the world, but they only served to remind her of what there once was. Her solitude was her pain, and she cried great silver tears which fell upon the earth. Where they fell, life blossomed.

Time passed, and the world she once knew vanished, fading into a distant legend. Gaea’s heart remained cold, sealed off, as she watched her creations change. Men began to form into tribes, and fight wars to kill one another for land and honour. They harvested her plants and ate and wore her animals. She watched animal kill animal, and it seemed to her that every creation she had wrought was marred with that evil which had broken her heart. Blood came to stain Ida in her eyes. Slowly she grew distant, and no longer even conversed with her infant works. Soon men turned away from her worship, instead believing in those other, long gone gods. After more and more time, their belief solidified, and new gods formed, taking on the form of the old. But Gaea cared not for the arrogant godlings who walked the skies, gorged on belief and full of hubris. She held in her heart the perfection of Ida – the new gods could never understand what they had never seen. Over time the last flickers of her soul, which had sustained her alone for so long, failed, and so died the World-Goddess.

The oldest myths sing of a goddess who threw herself from her sanctum in the sky. Shattered like her heart she fell in a thousand glittering shards which each struck Ida, piercing it with her glory. They speak of how Gaea's fall changed the world, staining it with her memories of beauty and betrayal.

Some legends tell of the men who saw the falling goddess, and their horror at that most perfect of cataclysms that had befallen them. For she was one of the old gods, and held in her heart was the memory of the beginning. Her fall was unprecedented in the world – a piece of paradise dropping into the lap of man. The very oldest tales, though, whisper softly of one man…who caught her.


Book One
Summa Chronlogia

The light was fractured, spun in a thousand broken webs of white rainbows. There was a shift, deep in the light, and something changed, reforming the webs. It was something primeval, something dead, and yet, not. The light responded to it, glowing slightly, increasing, pulsing. An awareness, a quick darting of the mind, in, out, like a fish net, cast out, then brought back, bulging with new senses. The something, hidden in light, took on a mood, responding to the new information. Exultant, and yet, incomplete. There would be more watching, and more waiting, but it had begun. Distantly, a chant began, reverberating across the crystal.

A white plaster tower pearled upwards against the dawn sky. Behind it the twin suns rose hesitantly, their light breaking in rainbows across the snowy Sael foothills. Six serpentine buttresses curled themselves around the tower, holding its immense weight. It pealed to an end in a great flowering balcony, many feet above the ground. The white tower was plain – no decorations or flourishes marked it.
The tower gleamed as the clouds broke away. Far below it, below the foothills, a cityscape was just visible, rolling infinitely to the horizon.
A young woman stood waiting in the shadow of the tower. Her hair echoed the snow, a liquid platinum white cascade framing her freckled face. Disturbingly, her eyes were coloured a bright violet, breaking her otherwise delicate features strangely.

She wore thick black furs, which waved gently in the wind. Iron jewelry adorned her; scarred metal bands circled her wrists and ankles, hung from her ears and encircled her neck. She stood leaning on a dark iron staff, also scarred in places.

Kiss shielded her eyes awkwardly as the tower’s shadow drifted from her. She glanced behind her and shook her head, frustrated. The loose path behind her turned out of sight empty, down into the foothills. She sighed, cold mist forming on her breath. She looked up at the looming tower again. Her clan often called it the ice tower, or the white tower, but it had no real name. It had been there since before the clan, she supposed idly. Kiss had never visited it before.