Terrianis writhed hours before his throne, his shrieks echoed until the last note dried his throat. The wound where his finely sculpted arm once served its myriad purposes remained agape until at last, his flesh gained back its proper shade, and grown back along with the bones, veins, skin and at last the clawed nails of polychromatic hue.

  When pain parted away at last, Terrianis remained on the cold marble, kneeling for the Eight knows how long. He stared at his haggard expression, his hair darkened and matted by weeks and months of incessant perspiring.

  Perspiration crawled unbroken from out of his faint pores, trickling across the exposed right side of his chest, whilst the fine garment diagonally crossing the left dimmed from kissing his clammy fair form, its trims torn, resembling gnawing teeth. Peering at his own mirror image staring back, he noticed scale-growths dulled in their luster, shadows shifted into their fluctuating corners. Instead of raising back up, he put his cheek upon the soothingly cold marble, breathed out the last vestiges of agonies, and stared towards the lake surrounding the platform and dais.

  Ethereal speckles in every spectrum of the hues floated in the space above the inner lake, coming from the frescoes painted upon the circling walls, divided by golden pillars protruding from the walls halfway. An arkhaine storm lacking Terrianis’s will brewed and raged within, and whilst he wished to emit the fear of death through a bellow, only a weak whimper left him as he wept like a child fearful of the encroaching darkness around their bed.

  The speckles whirred, darkened until they resembled hollow apertures the size of ants, penetrating the fabric of space. A strange note, a hymn of halcyon days they sang in myriad honied voices. Then they clustered together into the shape of writhing tentacles, tearing bottomless crevasses as they slithered on the lake, the soothing marble until they crawled and tore into Terrianis, until they all lined and wrapped about his spine.

  Terrianis growled as a beast, memories not of his own flooding into his mind. Growl turned to whimper, choked weeping as he again lost the reigns of his own mind. And theirs.

  As with before, Terrianis knew not when the ground vanished, when he began his ceaseless fell in the swirling abyss of nothingness. All he could register was the sudden arrival upon blackened soil, hard and unforgiving, cold in an unpleasant way.

  He laid there weak and hoping if he shut his eyes, the vision would just cease soon. But it didn’t provided such mercy upon his tired will. Slowly his lids rose, and stared at a cadaver of once a beautiful maiden kitted in the old and once bright coat of the Gryphon Equines overshadowed by the Draennith Praetoreath. A few plates of feathered sculpted trims, painted gold and silver clung to the fine and thick fabric, the collar torn a little, but death came from a life-sapping spell that took all color from her body, left her eyes glassy as they stared into his soul.

  Thousand more littered the vast fields where before farmers toiled under harsh suns, their skin tarnished by red tints, oiled by their sweat matting their poor clothes. A foul scent lingered, carried by the dead wind, its howl dampened by the battle in the firmament. The battle which left all these dead to decorate once a beautiful land continued betwixt the hundred flocks of wingless horror. Fragons of lesser standing, earned not their true eternity. Gryphons whose raiders fell long shrieking, splattered on the soil, inside the few humble edifices, and a few enigmatic sphinxes aiding the gryphons and dragons of brighter shades, hurling into the embrace of clustered trees.

  Green flames spread down from the heavens, vomited by a great dragon of oaken horns, spikes and ridged spine. A mighty dragon of the House of Matter and Nature. The mesmerizing flames spread quick, devoured flesh, metal, wood, and earth all the same, and before the waves of swirling greens reached prone Terrianis, he found himself hurling in the void.

  He landed upon the precipice of a steep cliff, black as lofty onyx, deprived of vegetation except for the dead trees painted black by Night itself, creaking and mourning in silence for their once verdant and vibrant canopies of green, blue and golden. No more they provided fresh, saccharine air They recalled from their youth, but let the air be dry, cold and crisp, hostile to life itself.

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  Five roads spread before Terrianis as he rose, winding unevenly towards once great walls bulwarking the dying city built with a queer, asymmetric ziggurat in its center where lights began to fade from the distant windows.

  And spread along the roads as holes were beaten into reality, through which thousands or even millions may have left behind their crumbling world slowly withered by mindless Twilight itself. No longer was this a realm of balance, but where Twilight ravaged all that which They built for several millennia, a wild beast it became. Six brilliant pillars rose against the encroaching darkness, held the final doom of old, whilst their children fled through the punctured apertures upon reality. To a land of promised riches, endless possibilities, and where they continued Their work for the Eternity they desired.

  Thousand other imageries flashed wild before Terrianis eyes. Imageries of immense eons lost to the people of Elhyrissian.

  He seen the first of the beast dash across the shifting lands, cower in the shadows of verdant forests, in the mouth of mountains, hills and mounds, bow their heads before the great winged beasts reigning over the heavens and beyond; he witnessed the first of the great horrors burrow into their flesh, lumber through the eons spreading madness and terror as they bellowed at the stars; he observed the few offered haven in the courts of the fae, in the multitudinous kingdoms of the elementals, make nests upon the shoulders of titans.

  He seen Chaos take the form of a dragon of eight heads, sprouting from a bulbous mass like the spokes of Its star, witnessed it take the form of the first Elevated, all of them; he observed as it vomited out Its children from all thirteen of its orifices each time the beasts became more than they were intended for; he surveyed Chaos weep heartily towards the endless boundaries of reality, begging nothingness to show its way. Nothing listened.

  He seen all the apes take the form of the first humans, barbarous and savage looking like their cousins the Orkhin who followed in the same realms; he witnessed the Seven tread amongst their chosen as parents and guiders; he observed the humans remain in the brilliance of Dawn, be mesmerized by the Magnificent Mother, take to the challenges of the Searing Maiden; he surveyed the wicked orkhin led by the orks of old whose ears hung, their snouts seemed even more hideous, resembled more their bestial forms, a mixture of ape and boar, followed them as they departed to lands dark, where Twilight sheltered them against the predators of Dawn, remained respectful of Nature’s Caretaker, dared the tests of the Grinning Trickster.

  He seen the more avian Djinn soar between hoary peaks, part their wisdom upon the dusky humans of their realms; he witnessed the first of the dwarves with their flesh still coated in the myriad fundamental elements depart from the kingdoms of their serene progenitors; he observed in true keenness the first of his kin, whose fangs and claws were sharper than his, their protruding spines, their more pronounced muscles, their dragonesque bellies, snouts, eyes all enamored him, their lack of hair repulsed him, as horns myriad as their colorful complexions jutted forth, stretching their silky skin; he surveyed the first of all races be visited by the enigmatic people of pure aether, mere silhouettes who spoke in ever-different tones, voices.

  And he seen creatures he could not describe, knew they were beyond even their people at their greatest height; he witnessed their cities defying the laws of their primeval lords, the wishes and wants of their sleeping creator, built in angles not even maghia could create; he observed the ages pass, their civilization grew decadent, and attempt their greatest desire; he surveyed the great attempt that invited their doom, felt his own heart beating wild as space tore apart, a light shimmered in a bright color out of this world, peered into the strange wound where the Black Serpent came be, whose breath stirred time into motion, wakened the First Dawn himself.

  But he witnessed not their folly, could not peer beyond the wall of oblivion. He reached and flailed, led by curiosity at seeing what none beyond the oldest of the great ones witnessed, and grasped what he believed to be this knowledge. Instead, it was the reign over his power and order, which he pulled, hurling himself. Somewhere.

  The raging arkhaine storm weakened, ceased its swirling and detached its calming tendrils as Terrianis straightened himself, took deep breaths of the clear, fragrant air. Fear still lingered somewhere in the corners of his mind and heart, his body trembled little in the long dress covering only half his chest. He turned and sit upon the throne hewn from a granite of a dead realm, golden primarily, whilst its rims shimmered in the brilliance of the prismatic mélange belonging to the Elhyrissiar.